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LAMB AND HAZLITT 



LAMB AND HAZLITT 

FURTHER LETTERS AND RECORDS 
HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED 

EDITED BY 
WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT 



I 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

MDCCCXCIX 



Copyright, 1899, by Dodd, Mead & Company 



r^H 



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Typography by D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston 
Fresswork by The University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS 






PAGE 


Introdtcction 


vii 


The Earlier Hazlitts 


1 


Hazlitfs School Days 


19 


Hazlitt at Hackney College 


33 


Between Two Paths 


53 


A Curious Historiette 


63 


The Subject Cojitinued 


88 


Hazlitfs Earlier Married Life 


105 


Liher Amoris. Part II. 


119 


A Packet of New Lamb Notes and Verses 


m 


Index 


159 



INTRODUCTION 

IN the autumn of 1898 a circumstance 
occurred which placed in my hands a 
remarkable assemblage of papers illus- 
trative of the lives of Charles Lamb and Wil- 
liam Hazlitt. A very old and intimate friend 
of the present writer and of his father, and a 
warm admirer of the essayist and critic of our 
name, the late Mr. Raymond Yates, shortly be- 
fore his death, did me the favour to restore to 
us certain letters and other documents which 
my father presented to him, it now appears, in 
1838, and of which the existence or where- 
abouts was previously unknown. The acquisi- 
tion of this small treasure coincided with my 
independent ownership by gradual means of 
several other inedited pieces by both authors, 
and it seemed to be worth while, and even ex- 



viii INTRODUCTION 

pedient, to take steps to preserve them from 
destruction. 

The long and close friendship between Lamb 
and Hazlitt, and the nature of some of these 
new additions to our stores, have led to the 
adoption of a plan, by which the whole of the 
matter hereinafter given is, as far as possible, 
arranged in chronological order, and although 
the material placed at my disposal by Mr. Yates 
comprises letters hitherto inaccurately and im- 
perfectly printed by all the editors, it was 
thought advisable, on the whole, to limit the 
present undertaking to what I believe to be un- 
published compositions, with a connecting ex- 
planatory gloss. The little volume may be 
treated as a sequel and companion to Messrs. 
Bell & Sons'* edition of the Letters, 1886, and 
the book edited by me in 1897 under the title 
of The Lambs. The remainder of the matter 
must be held over till a really final edition — at 



INTRODUCTION ix 

present impracticable from the want of certain 
important desiderata known to exist — of such 
of Lamb's writings as may be judged worth per- 
petuation, is undertaken. 

I shall in a prefatory way endeavour to point 
out the change and progress which only a year 
or two have accomplished in reference to a sub- 
ject on which the discoveries appear to be al- 
most as inexhaustible as the public interest. 

IT 

I. CHARLES LAMB. 

LamVs Family^ the Brutons^ Fields, 
and Gladmans. 

IAMB preserved his acquaintance with the 
^ Brutons of Wheathampstead down at 
least to 1823, when we find a letter of thanks 
addressed to Farmer Bruton and his wife for 
the present of a sucking-pig. But the writer 



X INTRODUCTION 

had spoken of Mrs. Bruton in a letter of 1819 

to Manning, who also knew the family. 

Under date of December 30th, 1898, Mr. D. 

Yeo Bruton writes to me : — 

''Have you, may I ask, at any time met with any 
information showing Charles Lamb's connection 
with the Hertfordshire Brutons ? I imagine they 
were an old yeoman family, who settled in Hert- 
fordshire about 1690. On Mackery End is one of 
his most personal essays, where he avows his con- 
nection with the Bruton family, and their con- 
nection with the Fields and the Gladmans, who 
were certainly among the oldest and most re- 
spectable families in the County. One is almost 
tempted to think that the essay upon Mackery 
End might well be annotated into a small vol- 
ume. There are still descendants of the Mackery 
End Brutons living in the immediate neighbour- 
hood, and if the Fields and Gladmans were also 
included, I should say the whole district of Wheat- 
hampstead, Harpenden, and St. Albans, is all 
alive with them." 



INTRODUCTION xi 

Mr. Bruton farther informed me that his family 
came from Lincolnshire, that Mr. Field, Lamb's 
grandfather on the maternal side, married a 
Miss Bruton, and that a descendant was not 
long since residing at Lea Bridge Farm, near 
Mackery End. 

H John Lamh^ the Elder. 

Since The Lambs appeared, two or three copies 
of the 4to. volume of Poems printed by John 
Lamb the elder have come to light. One (a 
very bad one) is in the British Museum. The 
title is : Poetical Pieces on several Occasions. 
[Quotation from Pope.] Printed for P. Shat- 
well. Without date. 4to., pp. 76 + iv. The sole 
interest of the book is biographical and indi- 
rect, as the productions themselves are of no 
literary significance. They may be considered 
the prototype of the Poetry Jbr Children, 
Prince Dorus, &c. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

Mr. Samuel Salt, M. P., the Bencher of the 
Inner Temple, to whom Lamb's father stood in 
the relation of servant, was the son of the Rev. 
John Salt, of Audley, Staffordshire. He was 
admitted as a Student at the Middle Temple 
in 1741, removed to the Inner in 1745, and at 
least as early as the succeeding year rented the 
premises, of which No. 2, Crown Office Row, 
formed part. John Lamb and his wife, and 
their three children, resided there with him. 
Mr. Salt was called in 1753, was Reader in 
1787, and Treasurer of his Inn in 1788. He 
was also a Governor of the South Sea Com- 
pany, and thus the Lambs enjoyed the advan- 
tage of a double influence in that quarter, Mr. 
Thomas Coventry, of the Inner Temple, being 
also on the Board. Salt is almost certainly the 
same person who is mentioned by J. T. Smith 
in his Book for a Rainy Day. The author 
states that Mr. Salt was introduced to him in 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

1785 at Tottenham, and that he spoke to him 
of himself as one of the four who contributed 
to bury Sterne. The Bencher died in Crown 
Office Row, July 27, 1792, and was buried in 
the Temple Church. In 1793, his library was 
sold by auction ; it is the collection of books to 
which Lamb himself hints at having obtained 
access, and which may have inspired the father 
with his touches of literary taste. Farther par- 
ticulars of Salt may be found in Notes and 
Queries^ August 4, 1888. 

But we seem as if we had yet to ascertain where 
and how Mr. Salt and his attendant first be- 
came acquainted, and when the latter originally 
migrated from Lincoln or Stamford to the me- 
tropolis. He must have been born about 1725. 

% John Lamb the Younger. 

The conjectures as to the existence and iden- 
tity of the pamphlet written and printed by 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

John Lamb the younger have at last been set 
at rest by the discovery of a copy in a volume 
of tracts on sale by Messrs. Dodd, Mead, & Co., 
of New York, in 1898-9. Readers of the Lamb 
Letters will call to mind that the author of 
EUa, in a letter to Crabb Robinson of 1810, 
speaks of his relative's book about humanity as 
then out, and forwards Robinson a copy ; but 
the difficulty was, that no clue was obtainable 
to the production, which was anonymous. The 
collection of pamphlets above mentioned, how- 
ever, contains a list of the contents in Lamb''s 
own hand, and although he has for some un- 
known reason scored out this and another item, 
the particulars are decipherable, and the rid- 
dle is solved. The title is : A Letter to the 
Right Hon. William Windham, on his Opposi- 
tion to Lord ErsMne''s Bill, for the Prevention 
of Cruelty to Animals. London, 1810, 8vo., 
pp. 38. 



INTRODUCTION xv 

The second piece which Lamb sought to dis- 
guise was the Confessions of a Drunkard, by 
himself. 

If Charles Lloyd and his Family. 
Apropos of the new volume, giving for the first 
time in a collective form the letters of Lamb to 
Robert Lloyd, there is much that is new about 
the latter family, and Lamb's communications 
to Robert must take high rank among the cor- 
respondence in any ultimate edition. But the 
book adds comparatively little to our know- 
ledge of Charles Lloyd— the more interesting 
member of this house. The letters to Robert, 
however, are a treasure for ever. What young 
man of three and twenty could write such now- 
adays ? In the New Dublin Review for March, 
1898, there is the following passage : — 
*'In 1797 Coleridge and his wife, ^honest, simple, 
lively-minded woman that she was/ had settled 
down at Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, to a 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

life of Arcadian simplicity. Here, though the rent 
was but a poor seven or eight pounds a year, the 
poet had for some time unsuccessfully carried on a 
desultory warfare with two leagued giants, ' Bread 
and Cheese.' Towards the close of the year his anx- 
ieties were lessened, so far as the giants were con- 
cerned, by taking into his family, as a boarder, 
Charles Lloyd, a kindly and intellectual youth, 
with a nice taste for literature, but a sufferer from 
the terrible disease of epilepsy. Poor Lloyd's 
' fantastic wantonness of woe ' must at times have 
acted adversely upon Coleridge's own phases of 
gloom ; but, upon the whole, the young married 
couple and their visitor had many things to make 
them happy. 

'^ There was a comfortable bed-room and sitting- 
room for C. Lloyd, another for themselves, a ser- 
vant's room, a kitchen and an out-house." 

This is the ari'angement to which Coleridge 

refers in his verses, To a Friend, On his p70- 

posing to domesticate with the Author. 

My late brother^s old and intimate friend, Ar- 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

thur Lloyd, son of James Farmer Lloyd, and 
grandson of Charles, tells me that he heard his 
father speak of the last time he saw Lamb, and 
it was at a bookstall in Copthall Court about 
1825. The same gentleman also gave me an ac- 
count of a convivial meeting — possibly at Al- 
sager''s — where Coleridge and Wordsworth (the 
latter then in the Revenue Department), and a 
gentleman high up at Somerset House, were 
present. Wordsworth was very reserved toward 
the latter ; and then the official grandee began 
to put questions to the poet on critical mat- 
ters, as to what he thought of Milton, &c., while 

Lamb persisted in interrupting with, 
"Hey diddle diddle, 
My man John 

Went to bed with his breeches on — " 
and other nonsense, till one of the party coaxed 
him away. This irrepressible hilarity and these 
high animal spirits were characteristic of his 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

earlier life. It was while Lamb was in his rooms 
at Mitre Court Buildings that he insisted one 
evening, when Coleridge was there, on carrying 
the latter upstairs, and then on Coleridge carry- 
ing him down again. The anecdote was related 
to me by Mr. George Daniel of Canonbury. 

II The Pipe and the Glass. 

Lamb''s propensity for wandering beyond the 
line of prudence in drinking and smoking is a 
point which has divided his biographers. In 
one of his earlier letters he alludes with regret 
to the intemperate habits of a friend at whose 
house he visited. "It is a blemish," says he, "in 
the greatest characters."" But there is a dis- 
position to think that a very small amount of 
stimulant upset him. So far as smoking is con- 
cerned, we know that he gave it up about the 
time that Mr. H. failed, and imagined that 
he should get on better without it. "A smoky 



INTRODUCTION xix 

man must write smoky farces/' But he returned 
to the practice as vehemently as ever. I have 
heard my father say that he used strong Ori- 
noco tobacco. His Ode on the subject was 
written about 1805, as I judge from a letter 
to Manning of February 24th that year; in one 
to Hazlitt of the ensuing year he speaks of 
having had ten pipes overnight, and signs him- 
self yours Fumosissimus. 

We can hardly fancy Lamb, "when he was a 
Rechabite of six years old," drinking water 
from the pump in Hare Court. The court pos- 
sessed three trees and this pump; and Lamb''s 
room, when he subsequently lived in Inner 
Temple Lane, overlooked it. 
As regards the delicate and rather shirked 
question of intemperance in drinking among 
our more immediate forefathers, one rises from 
a ^udy of the Club and Coffee-house life of 
the last century and the opening years of the 



XX INTRODUCTION 

present with an inclination to view that ques- 
tion in another and more lenient light. During 
their earlier life, Lamb and the two Hazlitts 
(John and William) were in the midst of a so- 
ciety which still preserved the old toping tradi- 
tions ; and the modern domestic hospitality, 
only modified by a more refined and limited use 
of the Club, had yet to come. Probably Lamb 
and Hazlitt, so far from drinking more than 
others, drank much less, if merely for the rea- 
son that in both instances a slight amount 
went a long way. Lamb adhered to his porter 
and weak diluted gin to the last ; his friend 
during many years partook exclusively of water 
and tea. The decline of coffee-house, and of the 
original type of club, life, may be ascribed to 
the changes in our social habits. Convivial 
institutions, which necessitate attendance at 
stated hours, have almost ceased to be in har- 
mony with our average habits. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

If LaniFs Library. 

In Mary and Charles Lamh^ 1874, and in The 
Lambs, 1897, a strong attempt was made to re- 
construct the bookshelves of Lamb and their 
contents, as they stood in the lifetime of the 
owner, saving only a number of presentation 
copies of contemporary literature, some of 
which he did not retain, but gave or even 
threw away. Since 1897, however, a few addi- 
tions, which I proceed to enumerate, have oc- 
curred to me: — 

Bistonio (Tigrinio), Gli Elogi del Porco Capitoli 
Berneschi. In 7-line stanzas, 4to., Modena, 1761. 

§ Mentioned by me in 1874 as the original of the 
Dissertation on Roast Pig : I was not, however, 
aware that Lamb actually possessed the book. 
But a writer in Notes and Queries, October 5, 
1878, points out a prototype in the Turhish Spy. 

Tracts. A volume in 8vo., containifig' : 

Antonio : a Tragedy in Five Acts. By W. God- 
win. 1800. 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

Co7ifessions of a Drunkard. By C. Lamb. From 

the Philanthropic Magazine. Reprinted in 1814 

by Basil Montagu as part of another volume^ 

again in the London Magazine for 1822, and 

eventually in Elia. 

Recollections of Christ's Hospital. By C. Lamb. 

From Gentleman s Magazine , June, 1813, and 

Supplement. 

§ See infra. 

Remorse: a Tragedy. By S. T. Coleridge. Third 

Edition. 1813. 

Antiquity: a Farce in Two Acts. By Barron 

Field. 1808. 

Speech of the Right Hon. W. Windham in the 

House of Commons, June 13th, 1809, on Lord 

Erskine's Bill for the more effectual prevention 

of cruelty towards animals. 1810. 

A Letter to the Right Hon. William Windham. 

[By John Lamb, Charles's brother.] 1810. 

§ An answer to the preceding. 
Ramsay (Allan), Chris fs Kirk on the Green, 
1718; The Scribblers Lashed, 1718; The 
Morning Interview, 1719; Content, 1719; 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

Scots Songs, 1719; and The Prospect of Plenty, 

17W. 

In a vol., 8VO.3 from the libraries of Dr. Farmer 
and J. M. Gutch, and with a MS. note by Lamb 
on back of title. 

Robinson (Robert), Miscellaneous Worlds. 8vo. 

1807. 4, vols. 

Shakespear (W.), Hamlet, 1603. Reprinted. 

8vo., 1825. 

Given in 1829 to the Rev. John Mitford. See 
letter to Barton of March 25th, 1 829. 

Blake (William), A Descriptive Catalogue of 
Pictures painted by himself. 12mo. 1809. 
Coleridge (S. T.), Christabel, a Trariscript by 
Sarah Stoddart, afterwards Mrs. Hazlitt, and 
other MS. matter by Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt 
(rough memoranda, culinary receipts, &c.). 
8vo. 

§This volume has been in the hands of C. 
Lamb, his sister, W. Hazlitt, and John Payne 
Collier. Inside the cover is the bookplate of S. 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

Stoddai% St. Ann's Street, Sarum. It has lately 
gone to America. 

H The Lamb Correspondence. 
There is little doubt that the Lamb corres- 
pondence, extensive as it has gradually shown 
itself to have been, has suffered more or less 
from the ravages of carelessness or neglect. 
Within the covers of the Elogi del Porco, by 
Bistonio, 1761, mentioned above, occurs, in the 
copy said to have been Lamb's, a small frag- 
ment of a note to some one, including the sig- 
nature of the essayist. It was during a long 
period a not unfrequent practice on the part of 
autograph-hunters to cut off the subscription 
and cast away the rest. 

The correspondence with the Norris family, 
printed in The Lambs, 1897, and formerly in 
the possession of Mrs. Arthur Ineen, one of 
Norris'^s daughters, who died in 1891, was an 
unexpected and welcome accession. It appears 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

from a communication to Notes and Queries^ 
August 26, 1893, that the address given by 
Miss Lamb is identifiable with No. 4, York 
Cottages, near the Priory Bridge, where, in 
1825, Mrs. Gibbs advertised one sitting-room 
and three bed-rooms to let. Not far off, a Mr. 
Hogsflesh had a large lodging-house. Could 
Lamb have heard of him in earlier years ? 
The Barton Letters, by the generosity of the 
late Mrs. Edward Fitzgerald (Lucy Barton), 
are now deposited in the British Museum {Add. 
MS. 85^56). They have been preserved with 
the most religious care ; but the series is un- 
fortunately not quite complete, as the masterly 
and beautiful letter to Barton of 1822 on Wil- 
liam Blake, first printed entire by myself in 
1886, appears to have gone astray. 
The unexpected and fortunate restoration of a 
parcel of autograph and other MSS. papers to 
our family in 1898 adds, so far as Lamb is con- 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

cerned, a letter to Hazlitt, two to Joseph 
Hume, and one to W. Hazlitt, the younger. 
The Epistemon of a letter to Hazlitt himself 
(1810) appears to have been a name borrowed 
from Rabelais, as the Menenius introduced into 
the paper On Persons One Would Have Wished 
to Have Seen is taken from Shakespear^s Corio- 
lanus, ii., 1. 

The courtesy of Messrs. Dodd, Mead, & Co., of 
New York, has enabled me to supply an inedited 
note to Allan Cunningham — the sole relic of 
the kind ; and Mr. Way, of Chicago, kindly fur- 
nished me with a transcript of a second one to 
Harley the comedian, which, however, is printed 
in my 1886 edition of the Correspondence. 
A remote correspondent was to have forwarded 
to me an inedited letter from Lamb to Miss 
Fanny Kelly, the actress — apparently the only 
one known — but it has not arrived in time for 
publication. It was described to me, rather tan- 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

talizingly, as " full of puns and humour." Fanny 
(Frances Maria) Kelly had a sister Lydia. 
There is a letter, not in the editions, to John 
Scott, belonging to 1814, in HilFs Talli:s on 
Autographs ; but, being in type, I merely make 
a note of it here. 

There are no ascertained or even rumoured 
letters to the Burneys. Admiral Burney was 
Southey's Capitaneus. Referring to a statement 
in The Lambs relative to Miss Burney, Mrs. 
Foss writes to me as follows. I give the lady's 
letter entire, because it supplies a few other 
points of interest : — 

The Priory, 

Totteridge, Herts. 
January 6th, 1897. 

DEAR Sir, — Feeling sure that you wish your 
lately published work on The Lambs, &c., 
to be as correct as possible, permit me to call your 
attention to a note on page 230. Mrs. Payne was 
the only daughter of Admiral Burney and sister of 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

Martin Burney. And Elia's essay called The 
Wedding is a real account of her wedding_, ini- 
tials and all correct. " One of the handsome Miss 
T — s" alluded to was my aunt. Miss S. B. 
Thomas, fourth daughter of Honoratus Leigh 
Thomas, sometime President of the Royal College 
of Surgeons. Mrs. Payne was a fine performer on 
the pianoforte. Her husband was for many years 
partner with my brother-in-law, Henry Foss, in 
Pall Mall, and the firm procured and supplied 
many treasures to the Grenville Library. My hus- 
band, the late Edward Foss, author of The 
Judges of England, was closely connected with 
the Burney family. His mother, daughter of the 
Rev. Wm. Rose of Chiswick, sister of Samuel Rose, 
Cowper's friend, was also sister of Mrs, Charles 
Burney, whose husband was son of the Historian 
of Music and father of Archdeacon Burney, late 
of St. Alban's, and grandfather of the present 
Archdeacon Charles Burney, of Kingston-on- 
Thames. Apologizing for the length of this letter. 
Believe me. 

Faithfully yours, 

Maria E. Foss. 



INTRODUCTION xxk 

A few months only 'before his death, on August 
5, 1834, the Rev. J. Fuller Russell paid a visit 
to Lamb, of which an interesting record is pre- 
served in Notes and Queries, April 1, 1882. 

IF The Works of Lamb. 

In The Lambs, 1897, p. 79, it was perhaps too 
positively stated that the verses contributed by 
Lamb to the elegiac collection on Priscilla 
Farmer, folio, 1796, was his earliest appearance 
in type ; for it may be a question whether his 
share in the Coleridge volume of the same year 
is not entitled to this distinction. It was issued 
in the early months of 1796. There Coleridge, 
in lines To a Friend together with an Un- 
finished Poem, refers to a similarity of do- 
mestic or personal circumstances in having also 
had an only sister, and he adds : — 

" Cheerily, dear Charles, 
Thou thy best friend shall cherish many a year." 

The minor works of Lamb have long formed a 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

field of research and controversy, less from their 
independent than from their indirect value ; for 
if they had never existed, the fame of the au- 
thor would have stood at least as high and 
have proved as permanent. The ill-fated farce, 
Mr. H., produced at Drury Lane, December 
10th, 1806, with Elliston and Miss Mellon in 
the cast, was never printed separately in Eng- 
land, but was included in the so-called Worhs 
in 1818. In 1813, however, it was published at 
Philadelphia, as performed at the Philadelphia 
Theatre, in an octavo volume of 36 pages. 
Lamb himself told Fuller Russell (see just 
above) that he lost £9^5 by John Woodvil — a 
serious sum in 1801 ; he seemed to regard it 
after all those years as his best production. 
Some uncertainty has prevailed, not only as re- 
gards the earliest appearance, but as regards 
the parentage of Beauty and the Beast, while 
Prince Dorus is accepted as Lamb's on the au- 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

thority of Crabb Hobinson, who saw him at 
work upon it in 1811. 

Now, among the advertisements at the end of 
a copy, in its original binding, of Godwin's 
Essay on Sepulchres^ 1809, occur as Presents 
for Youth of both Sexes, from Ten Years of 
Age and Upwards, '^ Beauty and the Beast; 
or, a Rough Outside, &c. 5s. 6d. coloured, or Ss. 
6d. plain," with a note — "This Work is bound 
in a way to lay conveniently open on a Music 
Desk"; and immediately follows, '' Prince Dorus ; 
or. Flattery put out of Countenance : A Poem, 
with 9 elegant Engravings. 9>s. 6d. coloured or 
Is. 6d. plain," with a Note — "This Work, as 
well as the preceding, may be considered as a 
well-adapted introductory step to a higher 
range of Poetry." There is no reference to the 
author in either case. 

The previous notice is not exactly conclusive, 
but it seems to go so far as to shew that both 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

volumes were by an author who desired to pre- 
serve his anonymity, which is done in the 
printed copies ; and with our accidental know- 
ledge through Robinson that the Prince Dor us 
was written by his friend, I should be disposed 
to hazard a guess that the other was so too. 
Then comes the difficulty that both are adver- 
tised as ready in 1809. So far as Beauty and the 
Beast is concerned, this may harmonize with the 
fact that no copy of the first edition with the 
title appears to have been found ; but I cannot 
reconcile Godwin's advertisement with Robin- 
son's entry in his Diary, unless the latter has 
given a wrong date. A copy of Beauty and the 
Beast, on sale by Messrs. Dodd, Mead, and Co., 
appears to be dated on the cover 1813 ; but on 
page 3 is a watermark, 1810. The copy of God- 
win's Essay, 1809, may have been put into 
boards a little latei', and the book under con- 
sideration may have been issued in 1810 or 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

1811, and had a fresh cover, dated 1813, added 
to the then unsold stock. At the same time 
there was, according to Messrs. Dodd & Co-'s 
account, a distinct undated impression without 
a watermark; and a third, called Second Edi- 
tion^ in 1825. 

Henry Crabb Robinson was, perhaps, so named 
after a Mr. Henry Crabb, whom I specify in my 
Catalogue of Book-Collectors. 
The account of the Chambers family, introdu- 
cing the letter of 1817 from Lamb to Charles 
Chambers, was communicated to me verbally 
by my friend, Mr. Algernon Black. Mr. Black 
now tells me that I misunderstood a few points. 
Edward Chambers should be Edmund Cham- 
bers. Both Charles and Edmund married, but 
had no issue. The former practised as a medical 
man for a few years, and died in 1857. He 
wrote occasional poems for his friends, but was 
so discreet as not to print them. The other 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

brother, John, died in 1862. He used to be 
fond of repeating the horse-steahng story, and 
of startKng people by prefacing that he was 
once nearly hanged for this offence. He would 
frequent a particular chop-house, and speak of 
a man who went there and ordered the same 
dinner every day in the year, except Christ- 
mas Day and Good Friday, when he ordered 
sausages. 

In The Lambs, 1897, p. 171, occurs a letter 
from Miss Lamb to Mrs. Kenney, of 1822, in 
which there is a mention of the diligence, called 
a Cuckoo, which then plied between Paris, St. 
Cloud and Versailles. My informant was Mrs. 
Kenney herself. The usual account is that these 
public vehicles were not established in Paris 
till 1827.* 

I possess collations of many letters, of which the 
originals have passed into or through my hands 
* Beckmann, 1846, i., 82. 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

since 1897 ; but I reserve these details for a fu- 
ture occasion or for the use of a future Editor. 
A brief memoir of Lamb by Edward Moxon 
was privately printed, 8vo., 1835, and in the 
Oxford University Magazine for the same year 
occurs some account of him. By the way, the 
expression "agnize*" = Lambize, is found in 
the paper, Oxford in the Vacation, and again 
in a letter to Procter of 1824. 
Certain occasional compositions by Lamb still 
await their turn for insertion in his collected 
works, if it is deemed imperative to hand down 
to posterity trifles which the author would 
have probably judged unworthy of such a dis- 
tinction. Here are some, at all events : — 

1. Prologue and Epilogue to Godwin's Anto- 
nio, 1800. 

2. Epilogue to Time''s a Tell-Tale, by Henry 
Siddons, 1807. 

3. Epilogue to Kenney"'s Debtor and Creditor^ 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

1814. Biographically interesting as antedating 

the acquaintance with the Kenneys. 

4. Epigrams printed in the Champion under 
the signature R. 4* i2., and not included in the 
editions. 

5. Supposed contributions to Leigh Hunfs In- 
dicator^ 1819-21. No. 74 contains a paper en^ 
titled ^Elia v. Indicator, where there is a semi- 
serious discussion on the identity of Elia with 
Mr. L 6, and the writer intimates an uncer- 
tainty, ostensibly jocular, whether the name is 
Lomb or Lamb. 

6. Conjectured papers in the Liberal. I am 
afraid that there is very slight probability that 
either. of the essays, signed respectively Carlone 
and Carluccio, were written by Lamb. See Notes 
and Queries, May 19, 1877. 

In the Catalogue Raisonnee of Mr. Mathews's 
Gallery of Theatrical Portraits, 1833, Lamb's 
essay on the " Old Actors " was reprinted from 



INTRODUCTION xxxvii 

the London Magazine of October, 1822, or 
from EUa, 1823. 

His Recollections of Chrisfs Hospital were 
printed separately, in 1835, 8vo., under the 
following title : Recollections of Chrisfs Hos- 
pital, Reprinted hy some of his School-fellows 
and Friends in testimony of their Respect for 
him, with Notes and a Preface. 
In the London Magazine for December, 1823, 
appeared A Note to Elia on the Passage in the 
Tempest, signed Loelius. 

A copy of the caricature by Gillray, issued 
with the first number of the Anti- Jacobin 
Magazine, and representing Coleridge, Southey, 
Lamb, and Lloyd, the two former with asses'* 
heads and the others as a frog and a toad re- 
spectively, was to have been inserted in my 
Mary and Charles Lamb book, 1874 ; but the 
publisher forgot all about it, and although it 
is referred to in the text, it is not there. 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION 

I cannot forbear to include in these pages, as 
a biographical document, a letter addressed by 
the most valued and in a manner most interest- 
ing of Lamb'*s later correspondents, Bernard 
Barton, to his friend James Keymer, brother- 
in-law of Laman Blanchard, and a gentleman 
formerly well-known in a certain literary circle. 
The communication speaks for itself, and I am 
indebted for it to Notes and Queries for Octo- 
ber 18, 1879. Barton, whom we chiefly judge 
from the tenor of Lamb''s letters to him, pre- 
sents himself here as a man of independent 
critical discernment, and as a careful observer 
of character ; we are perhaps rather too prone 
to regard him as a foil. It is the most thought- 
ful contemporary appreciation of the author of 
Elia which has fallen under my eyes. It would 
have been interesting to have had Keymer's 
reply. 



INTRODUCTION xxxix 

\ BERNARD BARTON TO JAMES KEYMER. 

Woodhridge, 
Jan. 4, 1835. 

DEAR Keymer^ — Thy account of poor 
Lamb's death, though it did not take me 
by surprise, for I saw it in the Times the day be- 
fore, could not but deeply interest and painfully 
affect me. I had given him up as a correspondent, 
after, I think, three unanswer'd letters, from a 
feeling that the reluctance he had often expressed 
to letter writing was so increased by indulgence, 
any further efforts to force him into Epistolizing 
would only give him pain, without being very 
likely to obtain any rejoinder, or were such ex- 
torted, it would be compulsory, instead of con 
amove, so I had given up all hope of hearing from 
him. Then came thy Message, through Miss C, 
which induced me to make one more trial. Yet I 
am glad I did make it, for although the notion 
may be an altogether erroneous one, I cheat my- 
self with the thought I might perhaps be his last 
Correspondent, if indeed he ever chanced to open 
my letter, which perhaps he might. If thou can'st 



xl INTRODUCTION 

give me any further account of his few last days, 
pray do! for I should like to hear all I can of 
him. Was he at all aware, ere his close, that it 
was drawing nigh? I should like to know how 
such a man would meet death. With all his wit 
and humour, unrivalled as it was, he was too 
good, I would hope too rich in right feeling, to 
die jesting as Hume did. Often as his sportive 
sallies seemed to border on what appeared irrev- 
erent, and to some rigid people the verge of pro- 
fanity, I am disposed to acquit him of all inten- 
tional offence of that kind. He was not heartless, 
however his playful imagination might betray him 
into frequent improprieties of expression. His vast 
and desultory reading, his constitutional tempera- 
ment, his habits of life, his eccentricities of man- 
ner, all combined to render him the very sort of 
character likely to be completely misunderstood 
by superficial observers. A cold philosophical seep- J 
tic might have set him down as a crack-brained [ 
enthusiast, while with a high-flown formal pro- ' 
fessor of Orthodoxy he would have passed for an 
Infidel and a Scorner. I believe him to have been 
as remote from the one as from the other. But to 



INTRODUCTION xli 

pourtray such a character were a hopeless effort ; 
HazHtt in one of his better moods could perhaps 
have done it as well as any one ; or Leigh Hunt, 
if he could lay aside his jennery-jessamy pretti- 
nesses of style and mannerism. Perhaps Lamb's 
own account of himself, as given in the prefatory 
paper to the Last Essays of Elia, is the best 
sketch of him we ever shall have. I should like 
a copy of his tribute to Coleridge, and pray tell 
me anything in thy power about him — his close, 
and poor Mary, for I feel not a little interested 
in knowing what is to be done with and for her. 
At some time or other I hope to string my own 
thoughts of Lamb in Verse, but I have no ability 
even to think of attempting it now. I can now 
only think and feel that I have lost him. 
We are all in the turmoil and squabble of elec- 
tioneering politics, things I never was very fond 
of, and now I hate with a perfect hatred. Do 
write again ere long, I will gladly pay postage to 
hear ought more about Lamb. 

Thine in haste, 

Bernard Barton. 
Mr. J. KeymeVj Stationer, 1^, Cheapside. 



xlii INTRODUCTION 

IF 

II. WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

IT will be evident, by a reference to the body 
of the volume before the reader, that many 
interesting new particulars of Hazlitt transpire 
in the course of its pages. Of his early married 
life we seem to be more ignorant than of his 
boyhood and his youth, where his sister's Diary 
and the correspondence between his father and 
himself from 1785 to 1802 are so helpful. The 
additional letters recovered by me from time to 
time have rendered my distinguished relative's 
later career somewhat less obscure than I found 
it when I first took up the subject more than 
thirty years ago; but much uncertainty re- 
mains, and even with the fresh matter printed 
herewith, the story is far from being as complete 
in regard to many biographical and literary 
facts as one could wish. Nor am I acquainted 



INTRODUCTION xliii 

with any unexplored channels or any missing 
clues likely to improve our means of supplying 
lacunas in the record. Indeed, as I mentioned in 
1867, had not Hazlitt been in his works to a 
considerable extent his own biographer, we 
should be still more greatly at a loss. In the 
case of a contemporary — of Lamb, whose circle 
of acquaintance was so large and appreciative, 
and whose extant letters are so numerous, how 
often we encounter difficulties and grounds for 
doubt ; and Hazlitt was, of all letter- writers, 
the most sparing. We have to be grateful, how- 
ever, for what we can get, and this latest contri- 
bution to Lamb-Hazlitt literature may prove 
not unacceptable or unfruitful. 
The peculiar intimacy of Hazlitt and Lamb 
constitutes my plea for blending the contents 
of my new book ; and it was an intimacy main- 
tained under rather difficult circumstances, in- 
asmuch as the two men, in their political opin- 



xliv INTRODUCTION 

ions (or, rather perhaps, their ways of looking 
at pubHc concerns) were so widely discordant. 
Lamb enjoyed from the outset an official in- 
dependence, and was what it is the fashion 
to term a literary amateur. While, therefore, 
through his acquaintance with Coleridge, Lov- 
ell, Lloyd, &c., he involved himself in early 
days in the attacks of the Anti-Jacobin re- 
viewers and caricaturists, he may be said to 
have observed during his maturer life an atti- 
tude of neutrality ; so that he counted among 
his friends men the most opposite in their pub- 
lic views ; even his noble letter to Southey was 
in defence of others as much as in his own. 
Hazlitt, on the contrary, a man of peculiarly 
sensitive and irritable temperament, had through 
his whole life to owe his maintenance to literary 
task-work, and was, moreover, an ardent and 
honest Liberal in politics — a Liberal as the 
designation was understood in his tim«. 



INTRODUCTION xlv 

Hazlitt imbibed from' his father, with a sympa- 
thy for the cause of American independence, a 
steadfast faith in the beneficial effects on human 
happiness of the first Revolution in France — a 
view not without its share of truth and reality, 
when we regard the old system which the new 
one superseded, but too Utopian and optimistic 
when we judge its merits in retrospect. The theo- 
logical school, to which the Unitarian minister 
belonged, was all along at heart republican. 
My grandfather has been charged with incon- 
sistency in admiring and upholding Napoleon ; 
but Hazlitt had in fact transferred the alle- 
giance, which he inherited from his father, to 
the principles of the French Revolution, so far 
as its mission of political enfranchisement went, 
to the man who stepped out of the crowd, and 
by his superlative and dazzling genius erected 
on the ruins of the former absolutism a new 
one of his own. 



xlvi INTRODUCTION 

Hazlitt saw with chagrin and anger the seces- 
sion of so many of the Liberal party from 
the cause — Coleridge, Southey, Stoddart, and 
others whom he had known, or with whom he 
was connected; and he and they consequently 
exchanged not very complimentary criticism ; 
he barely tolerated the indifference of Lamb. 
Cobbett, Hone, and my grandfather remained 
staunch to the old flag. 

I refer in the Memoirs, 1867, to the accusa- 
tion levelled by Southey at Hazlitt of seeing 
his likeness in one of Michael Angelo's devils ; 
but, curiously enough, the same writer else- 
where (in a letter to Duppa) says precisely the 
same thing of the author of The Road to Ruin. 
They both belonged to the camp which he had 
forsaken. 

At the Southampton Arms my grandfather 
was accustomed to confer with Hone and 
Cruikshank on the next political squib to be 



INTRODUCTION xlvii 

launched by the two^ latter in partnership. Of 
Hone my grandfather must have seen a good 
deal, although I have no epistolary evidences 
of their intercourse. Hone, like Cobbett, suf- 
fered severely for his opinions, and was tried 
before Lord Ellenborough for publishing a 
pamphlet decried by the authorities as blas- 
phemous. It was on this memorable occasion 
that the defendant handed up to the Bench 
one written on similar lines by Ellenborough's 
father, the Bishop of Carlisle. Hone published 
Hazlitt's Political Essays in 1819 ; some papers 
had been contributed to Hone's Yellow Dwarfs 
a title borrowed from the Nainjaune of Paris, 
1815. 

The Rural Rides of Cobbett, in whose Register 
Hazlitt wrote a little, forms a necessary Intro- 
duction to the Reform Bill of 1832, which my 
grandfather was not spared to witness. Never 
was there such a fearless and scathing exposure 



xlviii INTRODUCTION 

of villainy, cruelty, and cowardice in high 
places, such a humiliating, disillusionizing pic- 
ture of our aristocracy, titled and otherwise, 
as in the pages of those Rides, where we see so 
many of our greatest names brought forward 
to be branded as the enemies of their country 
and their species, and the younger Pitt let 
lightly off, when he is dismissed in company 
with his sovereign as a fool, but an honest one. 
Another of the men whom my grandfather re- 
garded as political renegades was John Stod- 
dart, subsequently knighted and Chief Jus- 
tice of Malta. His earliest literary effort was 
a translation from the French in 1797 of Les 
Cinq, by Joseph Despaze, an account of the 
five men who formed the executive government 
of France between the fall of Robespierre and 
the rise of Napoleon. 

It becomes indirectly important to state that 
Stoddart received his earlv education at the 



INTRODUCTION xlix 

school in Salisbury Clbse, his father, a retired 
lieutenant in the Royal Navy, then residing in 
St. Ann's Street, in the Cathedral City. For 
there the under-master was the Rev. E. Cole- 
ridge, an elder brother of the poet and philoso- 
pher, and this circumstance may be fairly taken 
to have been the channel through which Stod- 
dart was introduced to the Lambs and the 
Hazlitts. I have elsewhere spoken of the Jaco- 
binical group, of which my great -uncle made 
for some time one, and to which Holcroft and 
Thelwall belonged. The latter was during a 
few years editor of the Champion, and in 1822 
published an octavo volume, now tolerably 
scarce, entitled Poetical Recreations of the 
Champion, including his own and many by 
Lamb. Lamb's are to be found, with a few ex- 
ceptions, in the collected edition of his works, 
1892. 
Stoddart, by experience perhaps rather than 



1 INTRODUCTION 

natural temperament a cautious man, was not 
exempt in earlier life from perpetrating a few 
tactical mistakes. One of them was the estab- 
lishment of the New Times, of which Hazlitt 
said that, if any one wanted to keep a secret, 
the best plan was to put it in the columns of 
his relative''s paper, which proved a failure, al- 
though it continued in print during some 
years. The New Times professed to be uncon- 
nected with the paper called The Times, and 
was published every morning at six o'clock, 
price sevenpence. The first Number, called No. 
5415, appears to have been issued January 1st, 
1818. It preserved the original name till Octo- 
ber 4th, 1828, when the title was changed to 
The Morning Journal. The latter seems to 
have ceased on May 13th, 1830 ; but Sir John 
Stoddart must have severed his connection with 
the enterprize many years prior. 
I possess well-executed plaister busts of Sir 



INTRODUCTION li 

John and Lady Stoddart, most probably mo- 
delled at Malta about 1825. Sir John in his^, 
younger days was a member of the Lunar So- \ 
ciety^ otherwise Lunatics, to which social club \ 
his intimate friend Sir Benjamin Brodie, James 
Watt, Joseph Priestley, and others belonged. 
The meetings were held at the full moon. 
One of Stoddart's sons, the Rev. W. Wellwood 
Stoddart, of St. John's College, Oxford, was a 1 

i 

particular friend of Thackeray. There is a copy ;' 
of Esmond, with the inscription : " ReV^- W. ' 
W. Stoddart, with the Author's affectionate '; 
regards, October 28, 1852, W. M. T.'' \ 

Leigh Hunt, on the other hand, publicly i 
blamed Hazlitt for weakening their common | 
political interests by assailing him ; but his i 
friend vindicated himself from the charge in a \ 
letter, which may be read in the Hazlitt Me- 
moirs of 1897. Byron was scarcely to be counted 
as a political advocate outside his generous [ 



lii INTRODUCTION 

; fight for Greek freedom ; but Hazlitt and he 

I were never cordial. His lordship refers to Haz- 

i litfs mode of writing as not gentlemanly ; and 

1 the other dubbed the author of Childe Harold 

I " a sublime coxcomb."" I believe that Hazlitt 

entertained a sincere regard for Hunt, with 

the slightest possible jealousy of his personal 

Vaccomplishments. 

Leigh Hunt, before his marriage, lived with 
my grandfather and grandmother Reynell at 
Pimlico, and when my uncle Charles, as a 
schoolboy at Dr. Duncan's Ciceronian Acade- 
my in that neighbourhood, was required to 
write a thesis on the Horse, Leigh Hunt helped 
him by giving him as a start : " The horse is a 
noble animal, and eats hay and straw with equal 
facility." 

It was Hazlitt who advised Leigh Hunt to 
print in the Indicator the famous song out of 
Lyly's Campaspe^ as a favourable specimen of 



INTRODUCTION liii 

the class of composition. It is in the number 
for Feb. 28, 1821, with this remark by Hunt : 
"We cannot refer to what Mr. Hazlitt has 
said of it in his books, as we are always having 
reason to find, when we most want them, being 
of that description of property which may be 
called borrowable ; but we remember his advis- 
ing us to do the very thing we are now doing 
with it." 

It has been already stated that the houses 
open to Hazlitt, especially when his reputation 
was established, were numerous enough. He had 
no occasion to limit himself to the Southamp- 
ton Arms, even if he had not latterly divided 
his time between London and Salisbury. But 
I might have added that he also occasionally 5 
made one at Talfourd's Wednesdays, when the j 
author of Ion was residing in Castle Street, Hol- 
born, a barrister in moderate practice, and as 
yet only known to a select circle of admirers. 



liv INTRODUCTION 

My grandfather also attended Charles Kemble''s 
conversazio7ii. 

In the Mernoirs of HazUtt, 1867, i., 18S, I 
printed a letter from my grandfather, origi- 
nally inserted in the November number of the 
//London Magazine, 1823, under the Lion's 

// Head, in reply to De Quincey, on the Malthu- 
I 
4^ sian question. I conclude the idea of the Lion''s 

Head to have been borrowed more immediately 
from that designed by Hogarth for Button's 
Cjofifee-house^in Covent Garden. But it is trace- 
able to the Bocca di Leone at Venice. 



THE EARLIER HAZLITTS 



THE EARLIER HAZLITTS 

AND THEIR SURROUNDINGS IN IRELAND 
ENGLAND, AND AMERICA 

THE design of the present project for 
offering in consecutive order a series of 
papers, in which Lamb and Hazlitt are 
partly mixed up, accidentally yields the prece- 
dence to the latter, as my earliest material con- 
cerns the fortunes of his family, before they re- 
moved from Ireland, and then proceeds to illus- 
trate, by letters and other\vise, the careers of the 
Rev. W. Hazlitt and his son prior to their forma- 
tion of an acquaintance with the Lambs through 
John Hazlitt, the miniaturist. 
In the Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1 867, the pres- 
ent writer made a cursory reference to John 
Damer as a friend of the earliest Hazlitt — John 
Hazlitt the flax factor (of Vv^hom there is not any 
authentic or tangible record), and as his fellow- 
emigrant from the North to the South of Ireland 
in the reign of George I. The place whither the 
two removed was, as we know, Shrone-hill or 
Shronell, near Tipperary. 



2 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

A correspondent_, who is a native of Shronell, 
writes to me : — 

"I know Shrone-hill well;, and have heard hun- 
dreds of times of John Damer^ no doubt the same 
whom you state to have been the companion of 
John Hazlitt-, when he settled at Shrone-hill in the 
time of George I. There is no name better known 
to the people of Tipperary — I mean the town_, from 
which Shrone-hill is distant about two miles — or, 
indeed, to the whole country thereabout, than that 
of John Damer. ^ As rich as Damer' is a proverbial 
expression still current in Tipperary, and likely to 
remain so for many a day. For miles round Shrone- 
hill the ruins of what the peasantry call ^ Damer' s 
Court' may still be seen — a conspicuous object in 
the landscape, with its many lightless windows and 
crumbling walls slowly, but surely, passing away. 
"I venture to say that no traveller passes by with- 
out making some enquiry about a ruin at once so 
extensive and so unlike the many that are to be 
met in a land of ruins, and there is scarcely a 
man, woman, or child that would not be able to 
tell him something or other about the singular 
person to whom it belonged. 



THE EARLIER HAZLITTS 3 

" But the name of Darner does not depend for its 
preservation upon tradition alone. On referring to 
Swift's Works you will find some verses written on 
the death of one whom I think he calls ' Damer 
the usurer/ which throw some light on the occu- 
pation of the man — a point about which you have 
not been able to find any reliable information. 
" There are none left at present in Shrone-hill or 
Tipperary of Damer' s name; but it is still borne 
— having been probably assumed from the female 
line — a point upon which Sir Bernard Burke's 
Peerage would rxO doubt throw some light — by 
the noble house of Portarlington, whose family 
name is Dawson-Damer. 

"I have stood^ when a child^ by the grave of 
John Damer in Shrone-hill Churchyard. It is not 
marked by monument or headstone, or by any- 
thing which bears his name ; and yet there is not 
the slightest difficulty in finding it. Any little boy 
or girl in the neighbourhood would be able to 
point it out. It was only in keeping with the 
character of this singular man, who, as I have 
often heard, was in the habit of walking into Tip- 
perary on market days, or when business called 



4 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

hinij clad in plain frieze like any plain farmer, to 
desire upon his death that he should have neither 
monument nor headstone erected to his memory, 
but that he should be laid in a grave which 
should have a fresh covering of green turf laid on 
it every year. That is done to this day, and hence 
the grave of Darner is easily distinguished from 
the graves of his humble companions in death, 
which lie around." 

Burke furnishes a full account of Joseph Damer, 
who was a trusted officer of cavalry and diplo- 
matist under Cromwell, and who had possessed 
estates in Somerset and Dorset, but who sold 
them at the Restoration, and purchased other 
property in Ireland, where he might expect, as a 
Cromwellian, less danger of molestation from the 
new government. He died July 6, 1720, aged 92 ; 
and if the current statement as to his fortune 
applies to him, he left £400,000. His nephew and 
heir, John Damer, of Shrone-hill, died without 
issue in 1768; leaving as his heir his brother, 
Joseph Damer, of Came, Co. Dorset, a gentleman 
of considerable parliamentary and social position, 
whose eldest son became Baron Milton, Viscount 



THE EARLIER HAZLITTS 5 

Milton, and Earl of Dorchester (1753-92). A later 
John Darner (1744-67) married Anne Seymour 
Conway, only child of Field-Marshal Conway, and 
the well-known friend of Horace Walpole. 
The Darners, who were originally of Chapel, Co. 
Devon, having become extinct in the male line, 
Henry Dawson, third Earl of Portarlington (1786- 
1841), on the death of Lady Caroline Damer, 
youngest daughter and heiress of the second and 
last Earl of Dorchester of this family, in 1829 ac- 
quired the estates and took the name. 
Thus much for the Damer who is traditionally as- 
sociated with John Hazlitt. The poor, silly, dog- 
gerel verses by Swift and others on ^^Demar the 
usurer," seem to imply that his uncle Joseph be- 
came in later life penurious in his habits. 
The paragraph respecting the Hazlitt emigrants 
from Coleraine in the last century, in Four Genera- 
tions of a Literary Family, 1897, may be fortified 
and corrected by a letter which my father received 
some years since from a member of the Historical 
Society of Pennsylvania. Under date of February 
21st, 1885, this gentleman (then temporarily resi- 
dent in England) writes : — 



6 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

" I am anxious on behalf of a friend of mine at 
home to trace the ancestry of four brothers, John, 
Joseph, Wilham, and James Hazhtt, who emi- 
grated to America from Coleraine, Ireland, some 
time previous to the American War of Indepen- 
dence. The elder brother, John, who was killed at 
the head of his regiment at the battle of Prenes- 
ton in 1777, having been a distinguished Colonel 
of the Continental Army." 

Looking at the title chosen by its ennobled mem- 
bers, it seems by no means improbable that the 
Loftus family of Wisbeach was some offshoot of 
the Irish house, of Loftus Hall, Fethard, near 
Tipperary, whence the Hazlitts immediately came 
on their settlement in England. The Loftuses 
were at Fethard in the reigns of Elizabeth, James 
I., and Charles I. ; and the family intermarried 
with the Gorges family of Coleraine, a part of 
Ireland from which a branch of the Hazlitts was, 
as we have seen, derived. 

The residence of the Hazlitts at Maidstone from 
1770 to 1780 has been to some extent illustrated 
in the Four Generations, 1897. I have now, how- 
ever, to offer a few additional remarks on that 



THE EARLIER HAZLITTS 7 
period. Margaret or Peggy Hazlitt (the Diarist) 
was born there December 10th, 1770, as appears 
from the parish register, and both her brother 
WilHam and herself were baptized by their father 
at his chapel — the former on the 21st June, 
1778, the latter on the 30th January, 1771. 
The house in Mitre, apparently the same as Bul- 
lock, Lane, where the family lived, does not seem 
to be identifiable ; it may have been demolished, 
as extensive alterations have occurred hereabout. 
In the parish rating-book it is assessed at £12 
rental, and the name of the tenant is spelled 
Hayzlitt. The chapel in the same lane (now a 
thoroughfare running by the side of the Mitre 
Hotel) has been much modernized inside, but 
remains in the exterior mainly in its original 
state. In front, in the brickwork, is the date 1737. 
I note that Mr. Hazlitt's predecessor is described 
as presiding over Earle Street Chapel. When he 
came to Maidstone the Minister was 33, his 
wife 24. 

It deserves mention that a number of Maidstoni- 
ans migrated long since to New England, and 
formed a settlement there under the old namcj 



8 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

and that there is an ancient inn in the place bear- 
ing the arms of some of the original colonists. 
The family of Lewis, of Maidstone and elsewhere, 
of which the Rev. Israel Lewis was a member, be- 
haved in the most generous manner to the Haz- 
litts during many years, and probably assisted 
them to a larger extent, so long as their own cir- 
cumstances permitted, than we shall ever know. 
The Rev. Israel Lewis himself, Mr. Hazlitt's im- 
mediate predecessor, was minister of Earle Street 
Meeting House from 1744 to 1770. 
The Rev. D. D. Jeremy writes in 1 897 : — 
"One of your great-grandfather's nearest and 
most beloved friends was the Rev. Samuel 
Thomas, of Dublin, and it has just occurred to 
me that a fine portrait of Mr. Thomas (now in the 
vestry of Stephen's Green Unitarian Church, Dub- 
lin,) is the work of Mr. John Hazlitt or of his sis- 
ter. When 37 years ago I settled in Dublin, I be- 
came intimately acquainted with an old lady aged 
96, and her daughter aged 76, from whom I heard 
a great deal that was interesting about the Haz- 
litts. The old lady was a daughter of Mr. Swan- 
wick, a prominent member of your great-grand- 



THE EARLIER HAZLITTS 9 

father's congregation' at Wem. If I remember 
aright, the ladies used to speak of Miss Margaret 
HazUtt as being higlily gifted, like her brother, 
and very artistic. I presume I am right in identi- 
fying the David Williams referred to with the 
founder of the Literary Fund." 
The portrait above named, if by one of the Haz- 
litts, was, of course, by John. 

Two original and hitherto unprinted documents 
relevant to Mr. Hazlitt's movements, just prior to 
his removal to America in 1783, possess sufficient 
interest perhaps to deserve preservation in thoir 
entirety, more especially as they illustrate the 
personal relations of my ancestor with Dr. Price 
of Newington, Dr. Kippis, and Dr. Rees, of whom 
we know the first from many sources to have been 
a gentleman of considerable standing and influ- 
ence in his day. The former paper is a reply to a 
communication (probably lost) in which Mr. Haz- 
litt had evidently drawn a most unfavourable and 
gloomy picture of his position, and had broached 
the idea of emigration from which his correspon- 
dent, as we shall see, dissuades him. 
It strikes me as extremely likely that Hazlitt 



10 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

owed his introduction to the Unitarian College at 
Hackney to the successive connection with that 
neighbourhood and institution of his father's 
friends, Dr. Priestley and Dr. Price. 

Newington Green, 

June 28th, 1782. 

DEAR Sir, — I am very sorry for the account 
in your letters to me and Mr. Palmer of the 
distress you are in. In conformity to your desire I 
requested the favour of L'^- Shelburne to convey 
a letter from me to CoP- Fitzpatrick. In this letter 
I stated to him some of the particulars of your 
case, and at the same time assured him of my 
favourable opinion of you, and the irreproach- 
ableness of your character. He was so polite as 
immediately to answer my letter, and to inform 
me that all possible attention had been paid to 
your complaints ag^^- the officers ; that he saw noth- 
ing in your conduct with respect to them that was 
blameable, and that an order had been given to 
censure them. I learn from Mr. Palmer that your 
difficulties since you writ to me have increased, 
and that you are determined to quit Ireland in 



THE EARLIER HAZLITTS 11 

August. I heartily wish, you may be extricated out 
of your troubles and find a provision for yourself 
and family. You mention going over to America^ 
but I cannot advise you to this. I am afraid you 
would only find your difficulties increased by this. 
Deliver my complim^^ to Mrs. Hazlitt. 
I remain. Dear S"^- 

Sincerely yours, 

RicHD. Price. 
To 

The ReV^- Mr. Hazlitt. 

I HAVE known Mr. Hazlitt, the bearer of this, 
many years. I was concerned with the late 
D"^- Chandler and D'^- Prior in examining him be- 
fore his entrance on the ministry, and in giving 
him a testimonial of approbation. His moral char- 
acter is unblemish'd, and he has always been a 
zealous friend to civil and religious liberty, and 
the cause of America. His last settlement has 
been with a congregation of Protestant Dissenters 
near Cork, in Ireland, where he exerted himself 
successfully in favour of some American prisoners. 
Believing him to be a man of integrity and abil- 



12 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

ity, I wish him success in his endeavours to obtain 
a settlement for himself and his family in one of 
the United American States. 

RicH°- Price. 
Newington Green, 

near London, March Srd, 1783. 

WE whose names are underwritten, from a 
personal Intimacy with Mr. Hazlitt, sin- 
cerely join in the above Recommendation. 

And. Kippis. 
John Palmer. 
A. Rees. 

It was while the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt remained at 
Hallowell that he wrote the following graphic 
letter to the Rev. Dr. Howard at Boston. He 
most probably wrote many others ; but they do 
not seem to have survived : — 

DEAR Sir, — The morning after we parted, 
I arrived at the mouth of Kennebec; but, 
the wind being then contrary, and the fresh in 
the river so violent, occasioned by the late un- 
common heavy rains, as to prevent the flowing of 
the tide, we could not enter the river until late 



THE EARLIER HAZLITTS 13 

in the evening. Thef whole day was altogether 
disagreeable. The ship was incessantly tossed 
about like a piece of cork in a tumultuous eddy. 
Almost all the passengers were extremely sick. 
We could have no dinner dressed^ and we were 
in hourly expectation of being driven out to sea, 
and of being forced upon an unequal contention 
with the rocks and boisterous waves. But our sit- 
uation was more dangerous the preceding night. 
The vessel was old, unmanageable, and rotten as 
a pear. She leaked, I believe, above a foot of 
water every hour. The wind was very high. The 
captain and mate were drunk in their beds : the 
other raw and ignorant sailors were in the same 
state. Providentially, as the vessel could not be 
made to move but in a direct line with the wind, 
the wind was as fair as it could blow, kept us ex- 
actly in our course, and preserved us from other- 
wise probable destruction. We had a very tedious 
passage up the river to Bomley Hook. I did not 
arrive here before Sunday morning, and then only 
time enough to preach once to the people at 
Hollywell. I can as yet form no judgment of the 
place. The climate and the face of the country 



14 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

are much like Nova Scotia ; I think more agree- 
able. The people seem greatly pleased at my com- 
ing, particularly as I have come under the direc- 
tion of Mr. Vaughan. But, though the place is 
more out of the world than accords with my 
inclination, I will endeavour to accommodate my- 
self to it, if, after a few weeks' trial, I find myself 
acceptable to the people. When I shall have the 
power of more particularly informing you of my 
situation here, you may expect to hear from me. 
I wish for your good advice to my son. I do not 
petition for your other services, because I know it 
is unnecessary. Be pleased to carry the enclosed to 
Mrs. Hazlitt as soon as you can. With my respect- 
ful compliments to Miss Mayhew, Dr. Lathrop, 
and all inquiring friends, 

I am, dear Sir, 

Your very affectionate, &c., 

W. Hazlitt. 

Hollywell [Hallowelf\, 

Kennebec River ^ 
Nov. Jfth, 1785. 

In a letter from the Rev. J. Lathrop, dated Boston, 
August 4th, 1788, to Mr. Hazlitt, the writer says : — 



THE EARLIER HAZLITTS 15 

" Your very afFectiona4:e letter, in answer to mine 
by Mrs. Hazlitt, after a long passage, reached 
me, and gave the first information of her safe 
arrival with the children. Some time after I heard 
of your happy settlement at Wem. . . . The pain 
which we feel at parting with amiable friends 
would be exceedingly great were it not for the 
hope which we entertain of seeing them again. 
. . . Your Betsy, in particular, frequently ex- 
presses the tender feelings of her heart, in sincere 
wishes that she could see her beloved friend, 
Peggy Hazlitt." 

Miss Hazlitt notes in her Diary, so often cited in 
Four Generations, 1897 : — 

" The first six years subsequent to our settlement 
at Wem he [her brother William] devoted to 
study, and under his father's guidance he made 
a rapid progress. He was at this time the most 
active, lively, and happiest of boys ; his time, di- 
vided between his studies and his childish sports, 
passed smoothly on. Beloved by all for his amiable 
temper and manners, pleasing above his years. The 
delight and pride of his own family." 



HAZLITT'S SCHOOL DAYS 



HAZLITT'S SCHOOL DAYS 

WE hear a good deal in the years suc- 
ceeding to the return from America 
in 1787 of visits by the boy Hazlitt 
to friends at Liverpool^ of whom the Tracys were 
the most prominent and intimate. Mrs. Tracy was 
a West-Indian and a widow who^ having taken up 
her abode during some length of time at Wem^ to 
be near her daughters^ whom she had placed at 
school there, was now passing a year with them at 
Liverpool previously to a final return to Jamaica. 
William Hazlitt, having formed the acquaintance 
of the Tracys in Shropshire, was repeatedly in- 
vited to their house at Liverpool, and utilised a 
portion of his time in the course of these visits in 
learning French, which he had not an opportu- 
nity of acquiring at home. He and the Misses 
Tracy studied in fact together, and Miss Tracy 
was in some things his pupil, he having begun to 
teach her Latin before they left Wem. It was at 
Liverpool, as I have observed, that Hazlitt in 
1790 first came across Telemachus, and his sister 
the Diarist mentions that the book was still a 



20 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

favourite with her in 1835, and perhaps for the 
reason that WUHam Uked it. 
Besides the Traeys, our family made the ac- 
quaintance of those of Yates and Railton, the 
latter descendants of an ancient border family in 
the north. 

I append a series of letters addressed by Mr. 
HazUtt to his son and by the latter to his father 
from Hackney College, and his brother's house 
in London, in 1793, when the experimental train- 
ing at Hackney commenced. The latter are inter- 
esting for the same reason that I gave in the 
Four Generations, 1 897, for inserting that long one 
of my grandfather to his mother in 1790, when he 
was a precocious child of twelve. He promised to 
more than fulfil the criticism of Montaigne, that 
those who are going to distinguish themselves in 
life, must shew indications before they reach their 
twentieth year : — 

1. 

MY DEAR William, — We received letters 
from your brother and sister on Sunday 
last, by which we learned that they were well, 
that your brother had two new pictures Cxigaged, 



HAZLITT'S SCHOOL DAYS 21 

and that your sister is to leave London next 
Thursday evening in company with Miss Thorn- 
thwaite. They both were very affectionate in their 
enquiries after you. They had heard nothing of 
Isaac Kingston since they had your letter con- 
cerning him. Your brother said that your letter to 
him was very long, very clever, and very enter- 
taining. On Wednesday evening we had your 
letter, which was finished on the preceding Mon- 
day. The piety displayed in the first part of it was 
a great refreshment to me. Continue to cherish 
those thoughts which then occupied your mind, 
continue to be virtuous, and you will finally be 
that happy being whom you describe, and to 
this purpose you have nothing more to do than to 
pursue that conduct, which will always yield you 
the highest pleasures even in this present life. 
But he who once gives way to any known vice, 
in the very instant hazards his total depravity and 
total ruin. You must, therefore, fixedly resolve 
never, through any possible motives, to do any 
thing which you believe to be wrong. This will be 
only resolving never to be miserable, and this I 
rejoycingly expect will be the unwavering resolu- 



22 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

tion of my William. Your conversation upon the 
Test Act did you honour. If we only think justly 
we shall always easily foil all the advocates of 
tyranny. The inhospitable ladies whom you men- 
tion were^ perhaps, treated by you with too great 
severity. We know not how people may be cir- 
cumstanced at a particular moment, whose dispo- 
sition is generally friendly. They may then hap- 
pen to pass under a cloud, which unfits them for 
social intercourse. We must see them more than 
once or twice to be able to form a tolerable judg- 
ment of their characters. There are but few, like 
Mrs. Tracy, who can always appear what they 
really are. I do not say, however, that the Eng- 
lish ladies whom you mentioned are not exactly 
as you described them. I only wish to caution you 
against forming too hasty a judgment of char- 
acters, who can seldom be known at a single 
interview. I wish you, if you can, to become 
master of the gamut whilst you are there. I am 
glad that you have made so great a progress in 
French, and that you are so very anxious to hear 
Mr. Clegg's lectures. It is a pity that you cannot 
have another month at the French, &c. But, as 



HAZLITT'S SCHOOL DAYS 23 

matters are, I hope you will be soon able to 
master that language. I am glad that you em- 
ployed the last Sunday so well, and that the em- 
ployment afforded you so much satisfaction. Noth- 
ing else can truly satisfy us but the acquisition of 
knowledge and virtue. May these blessings be 
yours more and more every day. On Thursday 
morning we had a letter from Mr. Booth, written 
at Boston, 24 June, just five weeks before we re- 
ceived it. He was forty-six days on his passage 
from England, with agreeable company. They 
had sometimes very heavy weather, and so ex- 
tremely cold that the sails were frozen to the 
yards. The last winter was very extraordinary and 
very unhealthy in America. Consequently, many 
persons died in Boston and in other parts of the 
country. He says, concerning you, ' I read Billy's 
'letter to Fanny, and she was delighted with it. 
'She sends her love to him, but Fanny has lost 
'the recollection of her little playfellow. The 
'letter does Billy much credit. He has uncom- 
' mon powers of mind, and if nothing happens to 
^prevent his receiving a liberal education, he 
'must make a great man.' This compliment, I 



24 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

know, will not make you proud or conceited, but 
more diligent. He, also, desires his and Mrs. 
Booth's affectionate regards to Billy. You see how 
careful I am to transmit to you all the news in 
my power. I must now give you some information 
and directions concerning your return home. 
Mrs. Dicken is to send Sandlin with horses for 
George, at the time Miss Shepherd proposes to 
return. Mr. Swanwick has made me an offer of 
his white horse to go for you. Therefore, if you 
be not afraid to ride him and if you do not dislike 
this mode of travelling, the horses will be ready 
for you at Eastham on the day and hour you 
expect to be there. You will come forward the 
same day to a tenant of Miss Walford's, five miles 
on this side of Chester, and on the next day you 
will dine at Mrs. Wicherley's, at Whitchurch, and 
aftei*wards come home. But if the weather be 
blowing, or if it be not very fine, when Miss Shep- 
herd comes upon the water, you are not to ac- 
company her, but to wait until it be just what 
you could wish. You will mention the day and 
the hour that are fixed upon for you to set out in 
your next, or propose to me any other preferable 



HAZLITT'S SCHOOL DAYS 25 

mode of returning^ that I may prepare accordingly. 
And you will take care to leave none of your books 
or other things behind you in your hurry_, and 
also to bring my shirt, stock, stockings, and 
handkerchief. I hope to hear from you again on 
Wednesday evening next, and I propose to write 
to you tlie day following, to mention any further 
particulars that may occur with respect to your 
coming. I leave it entirely to yourself to thank 
Mrs. Tracy in the manner you think you ought 
for her friendship. You will stop at Mr. Nichols's 
as you come through Chester, and you may ask 
him to assist you in purchasing the best hat you 
can at the price of 8^., if you find yourself rich 
and choose to do so. Before you leave Liverpool, 
you will not neglect to call upon all persons who 
have shewn you any particular civilities. You will 
thank Mr. Nichols for the trouble you have given 
him, and especially your masters for their atten- 
tion to you, and Mr. Yates for his books, which 
you will be careful to return in the good order in 
which you received them. You will give my re- 
spects to Mr. Yates. I wish that he amongst his 
friends could procure for your brother engage- 



26 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

ments for about a score of pictures at Liverpool 
this summer, that we might have the pleasure of 
seeing him there. Your mother gives her love, 
and she unites with me in affectionate regards to 
Mrs. and all the Miss Tracys. 

I am, my dear William, 

Your truly affectionate father, 

W. Hazlitt. 
Wem, SI July, 1790, 

Kynaston attends the school at present. How 
long he will continue to do so, I cannot pretend 
to say. Jos. Swanwick talked of writing to you 
by last Thursday's post. 

2. 

MY DEAR William, — We had letters from 
your brother and sister, by which we 
learned that they were both well, that Isaac 
Kingston was returned to London, that Mrs. 
Large is also there, and that Peggy is to set off 
this evening on her return home, in the Baloon 
Coach, in company with Miss Thornthwaite. Your 
brother will go to Canterbury as soon as Peggy 
leaves town, where he expects some empl'^yment 



HAZLITT'S SCHOOL DAYS 27 

to help him to lay ill provision for the winter. I 
wish he may succeed no worse than he did last 
year in Kent. Yesterday evening we had your 
letter, which gave us much satisfaction, though 
you disappointed us in not being more particular 
in answer to my enquiries concerning the time 
the water will serve and the hour you propose to 
set off from Liverpool on Monday next. But I 
perceive that your paper was almost filled before 
you received my letter, and that you left yourself 
scarce any room to make me any reply to my 
questions. Sandland is to take your great coat 
and spatterdashes to protect you from the wea- 
ther. The horses will be ready for you at Eastham 
at 11 o'clock on Monday morning. You will take 
care to leave none of your things nor mine behind 
you, that Mrs. Tracy may not have the trouble 
of sending them afterwards. Take leave of Mr. 
Yates on Sunday afternoon in the vestiy, and, as 
I before directed you, call upon all your friends 
who have taken any notice of you. When you are 
at Whitchurch, call at Mr. Jenkins's, if you can 
spare time, and bring with you the last part of 
Dr. Priestley's Familiar Letters, which he bor- 



28 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

rowed from me when he was last here. I am, at 
present, hurried, and therefore you must expect 
but a very short letter. I cannot, however, neglect 
acquainting you that young Mrs. Hincks, the late 
Susan Swanwick, is at Chester, and will be here 
this evening. She came over quite unexpectedly^ 
with her aunt, her mother-in-law, and two boar- 
ders, who are coming to the school. Your sistei 
will be quite glad to see her friend, though not 
quite so much so as to see you. The only othef 
intelligence I can recollect is that old Mr. Walm- 
sley of Cromer died this morning, and that Ky 
naston, I believe, will stay here until Christmas. 
Enquire which is the best of the cheap French 
Dictionaries. Enquire at the bookseller's there 
for Watts' s Geography and Astronomy, and if it 
be there and you can purchase it for about half a 
crown, bring it with you. Do not forget to thank 
Mr. Nichols for his civilities. But what must you 
say to Mrs. Tracy ? I leave that entirely to your- 
self. But present her with your mamma's respect 
and mine, and our sincere thanks for all favours, 
and tell her that we wish to see her again, and 
that we also hope for this pleasure with a}\ the 



HAZLITT'S SCHOOL DAYS 29 

young ladies^ and all of them quite happy. My 
sermons will soon be printed. I shall embrace the 
very first opportunity of sending Mrs. Tracy her 
copy. I have lately come to a resolution of taking 
half-a-dozen of boys to educate,, if such should 
offer, under ten years of age, at 25 guineas a year 
each. You may mention this where you are, as 
there are multitudes in the West Indies who 
want a good education. Mrs. and the Miss Cottons 
are to be here this evening. Your mamma unites 
in love to you with. 

My dear William, 

Your ever affectionate father, 

W. Hazlitt. 
Wem, August 6, 1790. 

Dear William, you must excuse my writing to 
you now. \In his mother s hand.^ 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY COLLEGE 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY 
COLLEGE 

WE now leave behind us the school- 
days and the Liverpool visits, and 
must follow Hazlitt to his next des- 
tination, with his father's profession still in view. 

3. 

[Hackney College, 1793.] 

DEAR Father, — I rec^- your kind letter 
on Monday evening at five o'clock, the 
usual time. I was very much pleased you liked 
the plan of my essay. You need not fear for the 
execution of it, as I am sensible that, after I have 
made it as perfect as I can, it will have many 
imperfections, yet I know that I can finish in a 
manner equal to the introduction. I have made 
some progress, since I wrote last. The essay on 
laws will make a part of it. I will here give you 
an account of my studies, &c. On Monday I am 
preparing Damien's lectures from seven until half- 
past eight, except the quarter of an hour in which 
I say Corrie's grammar lecture, and from nine till 
ten. From ten till twelve we are with him. His 



34 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

lectures are Simpson's elements of gram, and 
Bonny castle's algebra. By the bye, the Ass's 
bridge is the tenth proposition of the geometry. 
From twelve to two I am preparing Belsham lec- 
tures in shorthand, and the Hebrew grammar, 
which I am saying till then. The shorthand is to 
write out eight verses, [of the] Bible. From half- 
past three till five I walk. From five to six, I have 
my g. grammar for the morning. At liberty from 
six to seven. From seven to eight, preparing Bel- 
sham's evening lectures in L[eviticus ?] and Heb. 
With them from eight to nine. And from half 
after nine till eleven I am reading Dr. Price's 
lecture for the next day. On Tuesday I am from 
seven till h. p. eight preparing Corrie's classical 
lecture, only the time that I am saying my gram- 
mar. And again from nine to h. p. ten, from which 
time to h. p. eleven I attend Dr. Priestley's lec- 
ture in history. From then till a little after twelve 
is C.'s classical lecture, which is Sophocles one 
week and Quintilian the next. In the greek we 
have two of the old students, in the latin five. 
J[oseph] S [wan wick] is now in my classes, at first 
he was not. But on his requesting it, he is now 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY 35 

with me. You will take care not to mention this. 
From twelve till one^ I am at Corrie's lecture in 
g. antiquities. With him till half-past one. From 
which till three I study my essay. Walking as 
before. From five till six, preparing my evening 
lecture in geography with Corrie, and my g. for 
the next day. And from seven to nine, except 
about half-an-hour at geography with Corrie, I 
again studying my essay. From half-past nine to 
eleven, reading David Hartley. I go on in the 
same course rest of the week, except the differ- 
ence that not having Dr. P.'s lecture makes, and 
that I now study after supper on Saturday night. 
On Sundays, too, I am always idle. I like Hebrew 
very well, the mathematics very much. They are 
very much suited to my genius. The Reid whom 
I mentioned is about eighteen, a Bristol lad, and 
a pupil of Mr. Eslin. I was in town to-day. I was 
glad to hear of the increase of my yearly allow- 
ance, and of what Corrie told Rowmann. They are 
very well. I am sorry to hear that my mother is 
poorly. My love to her and Peggy. I am. 

Your affectionate son, 

W. Hazlitt. 



36 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

I forgot to give you an account of my expenses^ 
and, as I am tired, shall defer till next time. I 
have spent only 8 s. since Thursday fortnight, 
though I have had everything I wanted. Adieu. 

4. 

Sunday Evening, 

DEAR Father, — I rec* your letter safely on 
Monday. 
On the preceding Saturday, I finished the in- 
troduction to my essay on the political state of 
man, and shewed [it] to Corrie. He seemed very 
well pleased with it, and desired me to proceed 
with my essay as quickly as I could. After a few 
definitions, I give the following sketch of my 
plan. 
' In treating on the political state of man, I shall, 

* first, endeavour to represent his natural political 
'relations, and to deduce from these his natural 
' political duties, and his natural political rights ; 
' and secondly, to represent his artificial political 

* relations, and to deduce from these his artificial 

* political duties, and his artificial rights.' This I 
think an excellent plan. I wish I could recite it 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY 37 

to my own satisfaction. I hope_, however^ to do 
it tolerably by Christmas. I have already got the 
greatest part of the ideas necessary, though in a 
crude and undigested state ; so that my principal 
business will [be] to correct and arrange them. 
But this will be a terrible labour, and I shall re- 
joice most heartily when I have finished it. 
Corrie seemed much pleased with some of my 
translations this week. 

I passed the Ass's Bridge very safely, and very 
solitarily, on Friday. I like Dominie (that is the 
name which Dr. Fees gave him) and his lectures 
very much. 

A young fellow, whose name is Reid, is by much 
the cleverest of the students. 
Since I wrote last, I have had seven more lec- 
tures in the week ; and at a little after ten on 
Tuesday with Dr. Priestley on history, and one 
every morning at nine in the greek grammar 
with Corrie. 

I have been in town to-day, as I generally go 
once a fortnight. J. Swanwick was with me. John 
and Mary are very well. They are to come and 
drink tea with me on Saturday. Since I came 



38 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

here I have spent above eight guineas. You need 
not, however, be alarmed at this, as in future I 
shall not spend, or, at least, shall not spend more 
than five shillings a week. About a shilling a 
week for washing ; about two for fire ; another 
shilling for tea and sugar ; and now another for 
candles, letters, &c. Books, furniture, and other 
necessaries have run away with a good deal, but 
these expenses are extraordinary. 
J. S. has had nine guineas from Mr. Lawrence, 
and being entirely stripped, he called at Law- 
rence's when we were in town to-day. When he 
had told him his errand, the little gentleman 
seemed very much surprized, and said that he 
must write to his father about it. But, sir, says 
Jo, I have a farthing, and I 'd be glad if you 'd 
let me have a guinea. Well, well, if you want it, 
you may. But, as he did not offer to get it and as 
we were rather in haste, I whispered to Jo, that 
I would lend him some money, till he could pro- 
cure his ; and so away we came, a good deal di- 
verted with the citizen's prudence. 
The weather here is charming. We had some of 
the clearest days last week I ever saw. 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY 39 

My love to my mother and Peggy. 

I am your affectionate son, 

W. Hazlitt. 
I have not read this letter; so you will correct 
any slips. 

5. 
[HacTcney College, 1793.] 

DEAR Father, — I was very sorry to hear 
from your two last letters that you wish 
me to discontinue my essay, as I am very desirous 
of finishing it, and as I think it almost necessary 
to do so. For I have already completed the two 
first prop, and the third I have planned and shall 
be able to finish in a very short time ; the fourth 
prop., which will be the last, will consist only of 
a few lines. The first section you know I have 
done for some time ; and the first, second, and 
fourth propositions are exactly similar to the first, 
second, and fourth of the second section, so that 
I have little else to do than to alter a few words. 
The third will consist principally of observations 
on government, laws, &c., most of which will be 
the same with what I have written before in my 
essay on laws. My chief reason for wishing to \ 



40 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

If continue my observations is, that, by having a 
11 particular system of poUtics I shall be better able 
I to judge of the truth or falsehood of any prevari- 
I cation which I hear, or read, and of the justice, or 
\ the contrary, of any political transactions. More- 
U over, by comparing my own system with those of 
jj others, and with particular facts, I shall have it 
Uln my power to correct and improve it contin- 
ually. But I can have neither of these advantages 
-unless I have some standard by which to judge 
[of, and of which to judge by, any ideas, or pro- 
ceedings, which I may meet with. Besides, so far 
is my studying this subject from making me 
gloomy or low-spirited, that I am never so per- 
fectly easy as when I am, or have been, studying 
it. With respect to theories, I really think them 
I rather disserviceable than otherwise. I should not 
1 be able to make a good oration from my essay. It 
\ is too abstruse and exact for that purpose. I shall 
' endeavour to write one on providence, which will, 
I think, be a very good subject. I shall certainly 
make it my study to acquire as much politeness 
as I can. However, this is not the best place pos- 
sible for acquiring it. I do not at all say that the 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY 41 

fellows who are here do not know how to behave 
extremely well ; but the behaviour which suits a 
set of young fellows^ or boys, does not suit any 
other society. This disadvantage, however, is of \ 
very little consequence, as little else is necessary ! 
to politeness than care and a desire of pleasing. / 
I have nothing new to add. My lectures go on as 
usual. We began the lectures on logic on Friday 
last. These, I fancy, will be easy and entertain- 
ing, though the students who have gone through 
them say they are not. We have two lectures a 
week on logic, which are on Wednesday and Fri- 
day. I was in town this day week. My brother 
and sister were very well. But I suppose you 
have heard from him since that time. He has not 
been here to-day. I wrote to J. Wickstead Friday 
week. Present my respects to Mr. Jenkins ; also 
to Mr. Rowe. Compliments to all inquirers. I 
hope my mother and P. are quite well before this 
time. I long to see you. I wish they could come 
too. 

I am, dear father. 

You aff. son 
W. Hazlitt. 



42 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

I forgot to tell you that Corrie has not returned 
me the first part of my essay. 

The next two letters seem to have been written 
from the residence of John Hazlitt^ 139, Long 
Acre ; but Hazlitt was still at Hackney. He was 
permitted to come up to town once a fortnight. 

6. 

London, Oct. 6th, 1793. 

DEAR Father^ — I reC^ your very kind let- 
ter yesterday evening. With respect to my 
past behaviour^ I have often said, and I now assure 
you, that it did not proceed from any real dis- 
affection, but merely from the nervous disorders 
to which, you well know, I was so much subject. 
This was really the case ; however improbable it 
may appear. Nothing particular occurred from the 
time I wrote last till the Saturday following. On 
the Wednesday before, C. had given me a thesis. 
As it was not a subject suited to my genius, and 
from other causes, I had not written anything on 
it ; so that I was pleased to hear his bell on Sat- 
urday morning, which was the time for shewing 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY 43 

our themes. When 1 came to hhn, he asked me 
whether I had prepared my theme. I told him I 
had not. You should have a very good reason^ in- 
deed, sir, says he, for neglecting it. Why really, 
sir, says I, I could not write it. Did you never 
write anything, then ? says he. Yes, sir, I said, I 
have written some things. Very well, then, go 
along and write your theme immediately, said he. 
I accordingly went away, but did not make much 
progress in my theme an hour after, when his 
bell rang for another lecture. My eyes were much 
swollen, and I assumed as sullen a countenance 
as I could, intimating that he had not treated me 
well. After the lecture, as I was going away, he 
called me back, and asked me very mildly if I had 
never written anything. I answered, I had written 
several things. On which he desired me to let him 
see one of my compositions, if I had no objection. 
I immediately took him my essay on laws, and 
gave it to him. When he had read it, he asked 
me a few questions on the subject, which I an- 
swered very satisfactorily, I believe. Well, sir, 
says he, I wish you'd write some more such 
things as this. Why, sir, said I, I intended to 



44 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

write several things, which I have planned, but 
that I could not write any of them in a week, or 
two or three weeks. What did you intend to 
write? says he. Among other things I told him 
that I intended to inlarge and improve the essay 
he had been reading. Aye, says he, I "vvish you 
would. Well ! I will do it then, sir, said I. Do so, 
said he ; take your own time now ; I shall not ask 
you for it ; only write it as soon as you can, for I 
shall often be thinking of it, and very desirous of 
it. This he repeated once or twice. On this I 
wished him a good morning, and came away, very 
well pleased with the reception I had met. 
My course is as follows : on Monday at eleven 
I attend Dr. Rees on mathematics and algebra. 
This lecture lasts till twelve. At two I have a lec- 
ture, with several others, in shorthand, and one 
in Hebrew with Jo. Swanwick. These two detain 
us till dinner-time, and we have another lecture 
in shorthand and another in Hebrew at eight at 
night. On Tuesday we have a lecture with Corrie, 
at eleven, in the classics, one week Greek, an- 
other Latin, which continues till twelve ; and an- 
other lecture with Corrie^ on Greek antiquities, 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY 45 

from one to two. On Wednesday we have the 
same business as on Monday^ on Thursday as on 
Tuesday, and so on. 

The greek class which I have been in this week 
consists of two old students, J. Mason, and my- 
self. I think that I translate more correctly and 
much better than any of them. The other day 
Mason was laughing at me, while I was translat- 
ing a passage, on account of my way of speaking. 
Says Corrie to him, 'Mr. Mason, you should be 
sure you can translate yours as well as Mr. Haz- 
litt does his, before you laugh at your neigh- 
bours.* 

I believe I am liked very well by the students in 
general. I am pretty well intimate with one of 
them, whose name is Tonson. J. Swanwick has 
been hitherto in a different class. But on apply- 
ing to Corrie, he has been put into the same class 
with me. Farewell. 

I am, your aff. son, 

W. Hazlitt. 



46 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

7. 
[London] Sunday, Oct. 23rd, [179S.] 

MY DEAR Father^ — I write not so much be- 
cause I have anything particular to com- 
municate^ as because I know that you^ and my 
mother, and Peggy will be glad to hear from me. 
I know well the pleasure with which you will re- 
\ cognise the characters of my hand, characters 
\ calling back to the mind with strong impression 
the idea of the person by whom they were traced, 
& JTLviyid & thick succession, all the ready asso- 
ciations clinging to that idea, & the impatience 
With which you will receive any news which I can 
[give you of myself. I know these things : & I feel 
/ them. Amidst that repeated disappointment, & \ 
that long dejection, which have served to over- j 
cast & to throw into deep obscurity some of the | 
best years of my life, years which the idle & illu- | 
sive dreams of boyish expectation had presented 1 
glittering, & gay, & prosperous, decked out in all 
the fairness and all the brightness of colouring, & 
crowded with fantastic forms of numerous hues [?] 
of ever- varying pleasure, — amidst much dissatis- 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY 47 
f faction and much sorrow, the reflection that there 
are one or two persons in the world who are [not] 
quite indifferent towards me, nor altogether un- 
anxious for my welfare, is that which is, perhaps, 
the most ^^ soothing to my wounded spirit." 

Monday. 
We have just received your letter. With respect 
to that part of it which concerns my brother's 
business, I have information to give you of one 
new 7 guinea picture. As to my essay, it goes on, 
or rather it moves backwards & forwards ; how- 
ever, it does not stand still. I have been chiefly 
imployed hitherto in rendering my knowledge of 
my subject as clear & intimate as I could, & in 
the arrangement of my plan. I have done little 
else. I have proceeded some way in a delineation 
of the system, which founds the propriety of vir- 
tue on it's coincidence with the pursuit of private 
interest, & of the imperfections inseparable from 
it's scheme. I have written in all about half a 
dozen pages of shorthand, & have composed one 
or two good passages, together with a number of 
scraps & fragments, some to make their appear- 
ance at the head of my essay, some to be affixed 



48 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

to the tail, some to be inserted in the middle, & 
some not at all. I know not whether I can augur 
certainly of ultimate success. I write more easily 
than I did. I hope for good. I have ventured to 
look at high things. I have toiled long & pain-) 
fully to attain to some stand of eminence. It were 
; hard to be thrown back from the mid-way of the 
\ steep to the lowest humiliation. I must conclude. 
You will not fail to give my love, & all our loves, 
to my mother & Peggy. Give my love to J. S. 
Remember me to Wicksteed & to Kynaston, when 
you see him. Compliments according to form. I 
am Sony Molly has been so ill. Farewell. 

I am your affectionate son, 

W. Hazlitt. 

The Rev. W. Hazlitt and his wife lie buried in 
the same grave in Crediton Churchyard. On the 
headstone is the following inscription : " Beneath 
this stone lie the remains of the late ReV** 
Will"^- Hazlitt, Died July l6* 1820, in the 84^^^ 
year of his age. Also Grace, Wife of the above, 
died June 10^^ 1837, aged 90." 
It is to be gathered from a letter from Dr. KIppis 



HAZLITT AT HACKNEY 49 

to Mr. Hazlitt that the income of the latter was 
derived from an annual grant out of the Presby- 
terian Fund, occasionally supplemented by spe- 
cial allowances, and doubtless by donations from 
the members of the flock. 

In a letter of 1821, his widow dates from ^'Pa- 
lace/' meaning the remains of the episcopal pa- 
lace, fitted up as a residence. Alphington, near 
Exeter, where the old lady lived during a brief 
part of her widowhood, is remembered as the vil- 
lage, where Charles Dickens acquired a cottage 
for the use of his parents in their last days. 



BETWEEN TWO PATHS 



BETWEEN TWO PATHS: 
PAINTING AND LETTERS 

THE notions and theories which the writ- 
er of these juvenile news-letters thus 
propounded to his excellent father in 
and about 1790, might be traced in substance 
or principle, no doubt, in his riper work ; he seems 
to have been in the habit of writing and re-writ- 
ing his boyish conceptions, and the project for a 
New System of Civil and Criminal Legislation, 
commenced in these years, doubtless underwent 
repeated castigation before it appeared, after the 
author's death, in the columns of the Atlas for 
1832, where the publication was announced be- 
forehand in the following terms. The Reform Bill 
of 1832 was then impending : — 

Notice. 
The importance of the great question that now 
almost exclusively occupies the public mind, 
and to which we have, in our present number, 
sacrificed our ordinary departments of Litera- 
ture and Criticism, justifies us in bespeaking 
the attention of our readers to a series of pa- 



54 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

pers on constitutional government, the first of 
which we propose to publish on the 1st Jan- 
uary, 1832. The intrinsic value of those papers 
is enhanced by the circumstance of their au- 
thorship, as they are from the pen of William 
Hazlitt, and are now for the first time to be 
submitted to the public. In those articles, the 
distinguished author enters at large upon the 
philosophy of government, and defines political, 
personal, and moral rights, with a truth and 
eloquence of which we knew hardly another 
example in our language. These posthumous 
productions may be said to contain 

THE CONFESSION OF FAITH OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

At the present moment these papers will be of 
more than ordinary interest. They appear at 
the era of the approaching triumph and con- 
firmation of the principles for which Hazlitt 
suffered prosecution during his life, and died in 
neglect. We need hardly recommend them to 
all literary and political inquirers. They may 
be received as the most remarkable work of a 
man who is admitted by his opponents to have 
been a profound thinker and a luminous writer. 



BETWEEN TWO PATHS 55 

While he remained at Wem, that historical inter- 
view took place between him and Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge in 1798, so vividly portrayed by my grand- 
father in print_, and so familiar to the world of letters \ 
under the title of Mt/ First Acqiiaintance with Poets. 
My grandfather was then a youth of twenty, and 
the meeting with Coleridge powerfully impressed 
him. It was almost like a newly gained sense. v^ 
The famous artistic visit of Hazlitt to Paris in 
1802 still awaits some farther elucidation. We 
have been made acquainted in the Four Genera- 
tions with the circumstance which rendered the 
visit possible, and was the primary motive for it. 
His sister in her Diary says : " He spent the 
winter in Paris, working in the Louvre from ten 
in the morning until four in the afternoon, suffer- 
ing much from cold and many other deprivations. 
But he cared little for these things, while he had 
those noble specimens of genius before his eyes." 
He brought away the annexed certificate : — 

MR. W. Hazlitt, the bearer of this, is an 
English painter, who has been studying 
for his improvement in the National Museum at 



k/ 



56 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

Paris, and has made copies of the following pic- 
tures. — 1^^- Copy of the death of Clorinda^ con- 
taining two figures as described in the Catalogue, 
No. 852. — 2^^y' Copy of a portrait of a man in 
black, by Titian, No. 942.— S-^iy- Two sketches 
from the portrait of Hippolite de Medicis, by the 
same. No. 76. — 4^^iy- Copy of two of the figures 
in the picture of the Marquis del Guasto, No. 
70. — 5^Jy- Titian's mistress. No. 74.— 6^i^iy- Sketch 
of three of the figures in the Transfiguration of 
Raphael. — 7. A holy family, from Raphael, No. 
935. — 8. Another head from the Transfiguration. 
— 9- Sketch of a head, from Tintoret. — 10. The 
deluge, by Poussin, No. 82. 

Le Directeur Genet^al du Musee 
certi/ie que M. Hazlitt s'est oc- 
cupe dans la Galerie de la Copie 
mentionee dans la presente Decla- 
ration. 

Fait au bureau du Musee le 12 
Pluviose an 11. 

Le Directeur General, 

DERRok, 




BETWEEN TWO PATHS 57 

One of his fellow-students was a certain Dr. Ed- 
wards, whom, he informs us, he had the good for- 
tune to meet again during his tour in France and 
Italy in 1824. Edwards accompanied him in many 
of his visits to the sights of Paris. They frequen- 
ted the fruit and flower market together, and my 
grandfather was enchanted by the politeness of the 
people with whom he came in contact. '^ What must 
the higher classes be, if these are so polished?" he 
remarked to his newly-recovered acquaintance. 
'^ You shall judge for yourself, if you like," the 
other replied ; and he mentioned that he had a card 
for the Duchesse de Noaille's reception that very 
evening, and would take my grandfather with him. 
The former agreed, and they proceeded together. 
But Hazlitt was not so greatly struck — did not 
discern a proportionate difference. The duchess re- 
ceived in her bed-room, sitting at a card-table near 
her bed, a four-post one with a good deal of gilding 
about it. The adjoining apartments full of company 
and lacqueys, who also played at cards. There was 
none of the stiffness of an English ceremony of 
the same class. My grandfather was introduced to 
the duchess, and stayed till he was tired. 



58 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

In a letter of January 15th, 1806, Lamb informs 
Hazlitt that Johnson the publisher had then 
promised to come to a decision in respect to the 
abridgement of the Light of Nature Pursued in a 
month. From a postscript to the present inedited 
and, unfortunately, mutilated one we readily infer 
that this term had not yet expired. It appears 
that Lamb had undertaken to procure for Haz- 
litt' s cousin, Tom Loftus, a print or prints, so far 
without success. The "Tingry" returned by Lamb 
was the volume by P. F. Tingry, entitled. The 
Painters and Var?iishers Guide, 8vo., 1804. The 
communication is twice endorsed, Mr. Hazlitt and 
Mr. W. Hazlitt, but did not pass through the 
post. 

It may not be irrelevant to notice that Mr, 
Joseph Johnson the publisher, who had so much 
to do with the publications of my great-grand- 
father and his son, and whose name has already 
repeatedly occurred in the Four Generations, 1897, 
died at his house at Walham Green, December 
20th, 1809. The connection of Johnson with the 
Hazlitts dated from 1790. 



BETWEEN TWO PATHS 59 

8. 
\January — February, 1806.^ 

DEAR H., — I send you Tingiy (pro[mising 
you instruction] and [some] entertain- 
ment). I should not have delayed it [so] long, 
but have been waiting for Loftus's commission. I 
have made several graphical tours round & in the 
metropolis without discovering any trees that I 
would venture to recommend : id est, I have 
gone no further than the shop [window], for such 
is my modesty, that if I explored internal se[crets 
I] should be laying out complimentary shillings 
rather than give trouble without remuneration. I 
have sent you a pretty emblematical thing which 
I happen to have in my possession : you may get 
some hints from it, though perhaps you may 
think it too tame : not sufficiently romantic, — the 
boughs not shooting fantastically enough, &c 
But to supply poetry & wildness, you may read 
the American Farmer over again. Nevertheless, if 
you desire it, I will put my head within the 
shops — only speak your wants. 



60 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

N. B. — If I do not hear in 4 days that you have 
received Tingry^ &c.^ safe_, I shall put you to the 
expence of a Letter to ascertain whether this 
parcel have [sic] been deliver'd to you. 

Yours ever, 

C. L. 
Johnson shall not be forgot at his month's end. 



A CURIOUS HISTORIETTE 



A CURIOUS HISTORIETTE 

TOWARD the close of the year 1807 a 
singularly strange and melodramatic in- 
cident happened. A report of the most 
circumstantial nature was circulated that Wil- 
liam Hazlitt had died by his own hand ; but 
I do not observe in the Morning Post of Decem- 
ber 29th the passage cited below. The original 
instigator of this elaborate hoax is as unknown as 
the account of it, which I now for the first time 
print, and which still farther augments the store 
of letters addressed to the Lambs, at one time 
supposed to have without exception perished ; 
but one is disposed to suspect that the whole af- 
fair was concocted between Lamb and Joseph 
Hume, of the Victualling Office, Somerset House, 
the common friends of the alleged victim of the 
tragedy ; Hazlitt expressly charges the former, as 
we shall presently see, with being the ringleader. 
It is extremely difficult to appreciate, as one 
ought perhaps to do, the humour of the business, 
and the jest strikes one as drawn out to its maxi- 
mum possibility, yet it is evident enough that 



64 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

during a few days it occupied the attention of 
the actors in it^ Hazlitt included^ to a consider- 
able extent. It may be regarded as a practical joke 
more characteristic of the boisterous hilarity of 
Lamb's earlier career than of a time when he had 
emerged from youth. He was now thirty-three ; 
Hazlitt was in his twenty-ninth year^ and had so 
far produced nothing beyond a metaphysical es- 
say^ a political pamphlet^ and one or two compi- 
lations. Perhaps^ however, none of the parties 
concerned regarded the matter seriously, since in 
Hazlitt' s Petition there is no symptom or vestige 
of vexation or resentment. As to the ^^unfortu- 
nate passion" alluded to in the first letter, the 
marriage to Miss Stoddart was arranged, and took 
place on the 1st May following; and in the only 
letter preserved of the ante-nuptial period (al- 
though it is certain that many passed), that of 
January or February, 1808, her future husband, 
in alluding to the report of his death, lays on it 
no stress, nor had the lady heard the news. It is 
well to remember, however, that Lamb was ad- 
dicted to these mystifications, and in the letter 
of February 18th, 1808, to Hazlitt's father, there 



A CURIOUS HISTORIETTE 65 

is a touch of the same sort of thing on a less se- 
rious scale. Hazlitt and he drew up that letter 
together. 

Hume, though well known as a friend of the 
Lambs and of Hazlitt, has not hitherto found a 
place in the correspondence of either, because 
the papers to be presently given afford the sole 
testimony to any letters having passed between 
the parties. Hume had six daughters, to whom 
(or some of whom) there is a note in my volume 
of I896 on The Lambs. Mr. Thomas Webster, of 
Kensington, has favoured me with the following 
account of them : " Amelia Hume became Mrs. 
Bunnett, and Julia married Vice-Admiral George 
Davies, R. N., and was the mother of Mrs. Tod- 
hunter (the wife of the eminent mathematician). 
Another of her daughters was my late wife, the 
well-known poetess, Augusta Webster." The plea- 
santry, which occurs in the letter to these ladies, 
and other similar witticisms on the part of Lamb, 
might easily be supplied with prototypes in the 
received biographies of Swift and his contempo- 
raries, of which Lamb could scarcely have been 
ignorant. 



66 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

9. 

C. LAMB TO JOSEPH HUME. 

ALAS, Sir, I cannot be among you. My fate 
- is still not to know on which side my bread 
is butter' d. I hang between two Engagements 
perpetually, and the worst always comes first. 
The Devil always takes care to clap in with a 
retainer when he sees God about to offer a fee — 
cold bones of mutton and leather-roasted pota- 
toes at Pimlico at ten must carry it away from a 
certain Turkey and a contingent plumb-pudding 
at Montpelier at four (I always spell plumb-pud- 
ding with a bj p-l-u-m-6 — I think it reads fatter 
and more suetty). 

I suppose you know what has happen'd to our 
poor friend Hazlitt. If not, take it as I read it in 
the Morning Post or Fashionable World of this 
morning : — 

'' Last night Mr. H., a portrait painter in South- 
ampton Buildings, Holborn, put an end to his 
existence by cutting his throat in a shocking 
manner. It is supposed that he must have com- 
mitted his purpose with a paliet-knife, as the 



A CURIOUS HISTORIETTE 67 

edges of the cicatrice or wound were found be- 
smeared with a yellow consistence, but the knife 
could not be found. The reasons of this rash act 
are not assigned ; an unfortunate passion has 
been mentioned ; but nothing certain is known. 
The deceased was subject to hypochondria, low 
spirits, but he had lately seemed better, having 
paid more than usual attention to his dress and 
person. Besides being a painter, he had written 
some pretty things in prose & verse." 
God bless me, ten o'clock! I have cut out the 
paragraph, and will shew it you entire. I have 

not time to transcribe more. 

Yours, 

C. Lamb. 
29 Dec, 1801. 

10. 

JOSEPH HUME TO CHARLES LAMB. 

MY DEAR Sir, — I have this moment read a 
scrawl of 8 pages professing to be a peti- 
tion with the signature of W. Hazlitt, written in a 
manner resembling that of our deceased friend ; 
and which ridiculously assumes him to be alive. 
There are some whacking sentences in it against 



68 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

me and particularly against you. I would there- 
fore advise you not to go near his lodgings^ lest 
you might meet with any body there ; and judg- 
ing that person (be he whom he may) to be the 
Impostor^ your friendly rage and a laudable desire 
to protect your own character may urge you to 
be boisterous and pugilistic, much to your un- 
easiness and probably to the diminution of your 
purse. In the meantime, I will not rest till I have 
discovered who is the author of the manuscript 
before me (I guess him to be a Quaker). 
In a day or two you shall see this abominable 
production : by which time I hope your wrath 
may be somewhat appeased. 

Yours (with much emotion), 

Joseph Hume. 
V, 0., 11 Jany., 1808, 

P. S. — You have never called to let me know 
how the subscription goes on. Poor dear friend, 
we will contrive to pay the expenses for him as 
quick as possible ! 
\Endorsed^ 

Charles Lamb, Esq., 

Mitre Court Buildings, Temple. 



A CURIOUS HISTORIETTE 69 
Here is the Petition promised in the last letter. 
So far from being "a scrawl/' it is written in 
Hazlitt's peculiarly clear hand throughout_, and is 
his largest extant contribution to epistolary 
literature : — 

11. 

THE humble petition & remonstrance of Wil- 
liam Hazlitt;,"^ now residing at No. 

34f, Southampton Buildings^ in the parish of S^- 
Ann's, Holborn, shewing that he is not dead, as 
has been pretended by some malicious persons, 
calling themselves his frieiids (the better to con- 
ceal their base purposes), & praying that his 
funeral, for which he understands a paltry sub- 

*N. B. — A blank is here left which the modesty of the 
writer would not permit him to fill up. Perhaps he be- 
longed to the class of non-descripts rather than any 
other. The opinion of the world was divided : some per- 
sons being inclined to regard him as a gentleman, and 
others looking upon him as a low fellow. It is hard to 
say whether he ought to be considered as an author, or 
a pourtrait-painter. It is certain that he never painted 
any pictures but those of persons that he hired to sit for 
him, and though he wrote a number of books, it does 
not appear they were ever read by any body. 



70 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

scription has been entered into, may not take 
place as was intended. 

This petition sheweth that the best way of prov- 
ing clearly that a man is not dead is by setting 
forth his manner of Hfe. 

And, first, that he, the said W. Hazlitt, has regu- 
larly for the last month rang the bell at eleven at 
night, which was considered as a sign for the girl 
to warm his bed, & this being done, he has gone 
to bed, & slept soundly for the next twelve or 
fourteen hours. 

Secondly, that every day about twelve or 1 
o'clock he has got up, put on his clothes, drank 
his tea, & eat two plate-fulls of buttered toast, 
of which he had taken care to have the hard 
edges pared off as hurtful to the mouth & gums, 
& that he has then sat for some hours with his 
eyes steadfastly fixed upon the fire, like a per- 
son in a state of deep thought, but doing no- 
thing. 

Thirdly, that not a day has passed in which he 
has not eat & drank like other people. For in- 
stance, he has swallowed eight dozen of pills, nine 
boluses, & as many purgative draughts of a most 



A CURIOUS HISTORIETTE 71 

unsavoury quality. What he has fed on with the 
most relish has been a mess of chicken-broth, & 
he has sent out once or twice for a paper of 
almonds & raisins. His general diet is soup-meagre 
with bread & milk for supper. That it is true that 
the petitioner has abstained both from gross 
feeding & from all kinds of intoxicating liquors ; a 
circumstance, he conceives, so far from denoting 
a natural decay & loss of his faculties, that on the ^ 
contrary it shews more wisdom than he was al- | 
ways possessed of. v* 

Fourthly, that in regard to decency he has been 
known to walk out at least once a week to get 
himself shaved. 

Fifthly, that growing tired of his sedentary pos- 
ture, he has occasionally got up from his chair & 
walked across the room (not as an automaton or a 
dead man pulled with wires might be supposed to 
do, but with an evident intention to \sic\ his man- \ 
ner of rising, & an inequality in his gait, resem- ( 
bling a limp). At one time he turned the front of \ 
I his great picture to the light, but finding the 
^ subject painful to him, he presently turned it to 
\the wall again. Also, that he has twice attempted 



72 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

to read some of his own works, but has fallen 
asleep over them. 

Sixthly, that the said W. H. has, it being Christ- 
mas time, received several invitations to enter- 
tainments & parties of pleasure, which he politely 
declined; but that on occasions he has generally 
about the hour of four in the afternoon been 
tormented with the apparition of a fat goose or a 
sirloin of beef. 

Seventhly, that in compliment to the season, & 
to shew a fellow-feeling with his absent friends, 
he has ordered a wine-glass & a decanter of water 
to be set upon the table, & has drank off a glass 
or two, making a shew as if it were port or sherry, 
but that he desisted from this practice after a 
^ few trials, not finding it answer. 
Eighthly, be it known that the person, concern- 
ing whom such idle reports are prevalent, has 
actually within the given time written a number 
of love-letters, & that a man must be dead in- 
deed, if he is not alive when engaged in that 
agreeable employment. And lest it should be sug- 
gested that these epistles resemble Mrs. Rowe's 
Letters from the Dead to the Living, being just 



A CURIOUS HISTORIETTE 73 

such vapid, lifeless compositions, it may be proper 
to state, by way of counteracting any such ca- 
lumny, that on the contrary they are full of noth- 
ing but ingenious conceits & double entendres, 
without a single grave remark or sickly sentiment 
from beginning to end. Farther that they had 
some life in them, he is assured by the quickness 
of the answers, which he received with that sort 
of pleasing titillation & gentle palpitation com- 
mon to flesh and blood, reading them with alter- 
nate smiles & sighs, & once letting fall a tear at 
a description given by the lady of the ruinous 
state of a cottage or tenement, which he hopes 
one day to call his own. 

It should also be especially noted that within the 
last three weeks he has borrowed money of his 
friends, which was at all times his constant custom. 
Again, that he has held more than one argument \ 
which nobody could understand but himself In- j 
deed his ideas seemed so thin & attenuated that 1 
they may be thought not unlike the notions of a 1 
disembodied spirit. But it should be remembered 
that his conversation was in general of that kind 
that it was difficult to make head or tail of it. 



74 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

That he has made several good resolutions to be 
put in practice as soon as he recovers, which he 
hopes shortly to do without undergoing the ancient 
ceremony of sacrificing a Cock to iEsculapius : as 
namely to live better than he has lately done, not 
to refuse an invitation to a haunch of venison, nor 
to decline drinking to a lady's health, to pay a 
greater attention to cleanliness, and to leave off 
wenching, as injurious both to the health & morals. 
That as it is possible he may not after all be able 
to defeat the arts of his calumniators, who may 
persuade the young lady before alluded to that 
the petitioner is a dead man, not able to go 
through the ordinary functions of life, that he 
has therefore formed divers plans for his future 
maintenance & creditable appearance in the 
world, as writing a tragedy, setting up quack- 
doctor, or entering into holy orders. 
That as the most effectual means of suppressing 
j such insinuations for the future, & to prevent his 
'friends from persevering in their misrepresenta- 
I tions, it may be proper to inform them that they 
i will get nothing by his death, whenever it happens. 
Lastly, as there are some appearances against 



A CURIOUS HISTORIETTE 75 
him^ & as he is aware that almost every thing j 
goes by appearances^ in case it should be deter- j 
mined that he is a dead man & that he must be \ 
buried against his will^ he submits to this deci- ] 
sion^ but with two provisos^ firsts that he shall be 
allowed to appear as chief mourner at his own 
funeral^ secondly that he shall have liberty to ap- 
point Joseph Hume, Esq., of the Victualling Of- ; 
lice his executor & administrator of his effects, as j 
a man of prudence and discretion, well-looked on j 
in the world, & as the only person he knows, who | 
will not be witty on the occasion ! * ' 

The said effects & valuables should be principally 
appropriated to pay his apothecary's & washer- 
women's bills. 

Here follows a schedule of those of the greatest 
account : — 

* Alas, vain are the hopes of man ! How are we deceived 
to the very last ! It is plain the writer had not at this 
time seen a burlesque account of his last illness & miser- 
able exit written by this very friend in whom he trusted, 
in a vein of irony & humour, shewing a turn for satirical 
description, but reflecting little credit on the feehngs of 
his heart. 



76 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

1. A picture of an old woman, painted in strong 

shadow, nearly invisible. Valued at 5 pounds. 

2. Sketch of a large picture of Count Ugolino, the 

canvass as good as new. Valued at 15s. 

3. A nymph and Satyr. — As there is something 

indecent in the subject, it is suggested that, 
if a prosecution could be procured against it 
by the Society for the suppression of vice, 
it might then be disposed of by raffle to great 
advantage. 

4. Three heads of the father of Dr. Stoddart, in 

naval uniform, done from description. It is 
supposed they will do equally well for any 
other naval officer, deceased, who has left 
behind him pious relatives. Their value will 
depend on the fancy of the purchaser. 

5. A parcel of rubbishly copies of old masters. — 

It is proposed that Mr. Tickell should have 
the refusal of these, as he will easily be able 
to dispose of them as originals. The price to 
be left to his generosity. 

6. A bundle of manuscripts, exceedingly abstruse 

& unintelligible. It is hoped they may occa- 
sion great disputes among the learned. If 



A CURIOUS, HISTORIETTE 77 
they are refused by the booksellers, they 
may be offered to the British Museum for a 
trifling sum, which if not advanced they may 
be deposited there for the inspection of the 
curious. 
7, & lastly, a small Claude Lorraine mirror, which 
Mr. Lamb the other evening secretly pur- 
loined after a pretended visit of condolence 
to his sick friend ; & which will doubtless be 
found shamelessly hung up in the chambers 
of the fraudulent possessor as a final trophy 
& insult over the memory of the deceased. It 
is probable that when charged with the ir- 
regular transfer of property he will say that 
it was won at a game at cribbage. But this is 
an entirely false pretence. 
With all the sincerity of a man doubtful between 
life & death, the petitioner declares that he looks 
upon the said Charles Lamb as the ring-leader in 
this unjust conspiracy against him, & as the sole 
cause & author of the jeopardy he is in : but that 
as losers have leave to speak, he must say, that, 
if it were not for a poem he wrote on Tobacco 
about two years ago, a farce called Mr. H he 



78 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

brought out last winter with more wit than dis- 
cretion in it^ some prologues & epilogues he has 
since written with good success, & some lively 
notes he is at present ivriting on dead authors, he 
sees no reason why he should not be considered 
as much a dead man as himself, & the undertaker 
spoken to accordingly. 

A true copy. 

W. Hazlitt. 
Dated Sunday the 10th of J any, 

1808. 
p.S. — Whereas it is scandalously & falsely as- 
serted in a written paper circulated at the ex- 
pence of the above-named W. H. that he has 
been heard to spout amourous verses, & sing licen- 
tious ditties & burthens of old songs with his lat- 
est breath, a number of penny ballads & verses 
being also strewed about his room in an indecent 
manner, he begs leave to state that the only song 
he has once thought of of late is the Cuckoo song, 
but that this has run a good deal in his head, & 
that he has often broken out into the following 
verse, 

Mocks married men from tree to tree. 



A CURIOUS HISTORIETTE 79 

Also once_, upon receiving some expressions of 
tender concern & anxious inquiries into the cause 
of his illness from a person that shall be name- 
less, he sung in a faint manner the following pa- 
rody on two lines in the Beggar's Opera : — 

" For on the pill that cures my dear, 

'' Depends poor Polly s life ! " 
\Endorsed^ 

Joseph Hume, Esq., 

Victualling Office, Somerset Place. 
The post-mark is : '' 12 o'clock, Ja. 11, 1808." 



THE SUJBJECT CONTINUED 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 

THERE succeeds a long letter (four pa- 
ges folio) from Lamb to Hume, \vith-_ 
out any subscription, ^ut signed all^ 
over ;— 

12. 

CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH HUME. 

12 January^ 1808. 

DEAR Sir, — The strange rumours which have 
been spread about since the death of our 
respected friend, as well as some things which 
have come under my own observation, which I 
do not care to trust to the ordinary communica- 
tion of a Post, but reserve them for the especial 
confidence of your most valued ear in private, — 
these things, without much help from a rainy 
day or time of the year which usually disposes 
men to sadness, have contributed to make me not 
a little serious and thoughtful of late. I have run 
over in my mind the various treatises which I 
have perused in the course of a studious, and, I 
hope, innocently employed life, on the nature of 
disembodied Spirits & the causes of their revisit- 



84 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

ing the earth. The fact I will take for granted; 
presuming that I am not addressing an Atheist. 
I find the most commonly assigned reason to be, 
for the revealing of hidden Treasures which the De- 
ceased had hoarded up in his or her Lifetime. Now 
though I cannot sufficiently admire the provi- 
dence of God who by this means has ofttimes re- 
stored great heaps of Gold & Silver to the circu- 
lation of the Living, thereby sparing the iterately 
^ plowed and now almost effoete wombs of Peru 
\ & Mexico, which would need another Sarah's 
\ miracle to replenish, yet in the particular case of 
( the Defunct I cannot but suspect some other 
/ cause, and not this, to have called him from his 
C six foot bed of earth. For it is highly improbable 
' that He should have accumulated any such vast 
treasures, for the revealing of which a miracle 
was needed, without some suspicion of the fact 
among his friends during his Lifetime. I for my 
part always looked upon our dear friend as a man 
rich rather in the gifts of his mind than in earth- 
ly treasures. He had few rents or comings in, 
that I was ever aware of, small (if any) landed 
property, and by all that I could witness he sub- 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 85 

^sisj^d more upon the well-timed contributions of 
a few chosen friends who knew his worthy than 
upon any Estate which could properly be called 
his own. I myself have contributed my part. God 
knows, I speak not this in reproach. I have never 
taken, nor indeed did the Deceased offer, any 
written acknowledgements of the various sums which 
he has had of me, by which I could make the 
fact manifest to the legal eye of an Executor or 
Administrator. He was not a Man to affect these 
niceties in his transactions with his friends. He 
would often say. Money was nothing between in- | 
timate acquaintances, that Golden Streams had 
no Ebb, that a Purse mouth never regorged, that 
God loved a chearful giver but the Devil hated a 
free taker, that a paid Loan makes angels groan, 
with many such like sayings : he had always free 
and generous notions about money. His nearest | 
friends know this best. Induced by these consid- 
erations I give up that commonly received notion 
of Revealable Treasures in our friend's case. Nei- 
ther am I too forward to adopt that vulgar super- 
stition of some hidden Murder to be brought to i 
light ; which yet I do not universally reject : for / 



86 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

when I revolve^ that the Defunct was naturally 
of a discoursible and communicative temper 
(though of a gloomy and close aspect^ as born 
under Saturn)^ a great repeater of conversations 
which he generally canied away verbatim & 
would repeat with syllabic exactness in the next 
company where he was received (by which means 
I that have staid at home have often reaped the 
profit of his travels without stirring from my el- 
bow chair)j I cannot think that if He had been 
present at so remarkable circumstance as a mur- 
der he would so soon have forgotten it as to 
make no mention of it at the next place where 
he dined or supt, or that he could have restrained 
himself from giving the particulars of a matter of 
fact like that in his life time. I am sure I have of- 
ten heard him dilate upon occurrences of a much 
less interesting sort than that in question. I am 
most inclined to support that opinion which fa- 
vours the Establishing of some Speculative Point 
in Religion : a frequent cause, says Wierus, for 
Spirits returning to the Earth, to confute Athe- 
ists, &c. When I consider the Education which 
our friend received from a venerable Paren*-, his 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 87 

religious destination, his nurture at a Seminary 
appropriated to young Ministers : but whatever 
the cause of this reappearance may prove to be, 
we may now with truth assert that our deceased 
friend has attained to one object of his pursuits, 
one hour's separate existence gives a dead man 
clearer notions of metaphysics than all the trea- 
tises which in this state of carnal entanglement i 
the least-immersed spirit can out-spin. It is good 
to leave such subjects to that period when we 
shall have no Heads to ache, no brains to distort, 
no faces to lengthen, no clothes to neglect. Had \ 
our dear friend attended to this, he might have 
shewn his airy form in courts & ball rooms, whis- 
pered the fair, ogled, sung, danced, and known 
just as much of those subjects as it is probable 
he ever knew previous to his death : for I always 
take it, that a disposition to such sort of enquiries 

and ends in lunacy and dirty linen. You have my 
opinions. [No signature.] 

[Endorsed] 
J. Hume, Esq. 

Victualling Office, Somerset House. 



88 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

I have to give, as next in order, a very long epis- 
tle from Hume to Lamb on the same subject, 

sent by hand. 

13. 

JOSEPH HUME TO CHARLES LAMB. 

VAIN, my dear friend, were my promises to 
you of discovering the person who has tried 
to impose upon me a spurious epistle of our un- 
fortunate friend, alas no more ! On reading it a" 
second time some circumstances arose in my mind 
that you, with your well-known ingenuity, will 
turn p^to such an account as may eventually be \ 
successful in detecting this base business. ^ 

The inclosure is evidently built by some one who 
has seen the epistle which, in the swelling sorrow 
of my heart, I lately sent you. You, dearest Sir, 
must know what is due to your honour and friend- 
ship better than to have shewn that confidential 
effusion to a living soul. How could the writer of 
the inclosed have seen it then } Probably you have 
had your pocket picked } Where have you visited ? 
In what situations have you been with my letter 
in your pocket ? Trace your diaries, my dear Sir, 
and we may have a clue. How could the writer 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 89 

have obtained our poor friend's hand writing, for 
it is evidently copied, and copied well ? Had he 
an Amanuensis ? Perhaps some Printer's Devil 
who, having in our friend's life time been perpet- 
ually wearied with his manuscripts, has deter- 
mined (an odd sort of a revenge you will say) to 
weary other people by copying him — haud equis 
passibus, that is — not quite so obscurely or (if you 
please) metaphysically. 

The task were easy to prove the imposture. In- 
deed the work detects itself. I will give you a 
few hasty instances taken promiscuously, for you 
cannot dip amiss where it is clear that you or I or 
Johnny Nokes or Tom Stiles might have written 
it as easily as He who did write it. 
1^^- He says " that the best way of proving clearly 
that a man is not dead is by setting forth his 
manner of life." Now, Sir, we have a full and 
detailed account of what was said and done by 
Thommy Hickathrift and Seneca, by Jack the 
Giant Killer and Dr. Samuel Johnson long after 
they were dead : and nobody either on a principle 
of revenge, craft, or any other unknown motive 
has had the effrontery to pretend, as in the case 



90 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

before us^ that those worthy personages did not 
die at the time stated by their friends. It hurts 
me to think that you and I^ such highly respec- 
table characters, the delight of our friends, the 
envy of the learned, the soul of &c._, &c., &c., 
should have our veracity doubted by an unknown 
scribbler, who to give the devil his due, writes 
with ingenuity and archness, when I am confident | 
that, had the news of his own death reached our 1 t 
poor friend's ears dispensed from our mouths he, 
depending on our scrupulous love of truth, would 
insensibly have believed the tale. But to proceed. 
gdiy. He says that on a morning he eats " bvo 
plate-fulls of buttered toast." That 's a good one ! 
I have him there ! I know that he scarcely, when 
he was not in love, ever ate any breakfast. 
S'^^y- He talks of getting himself shaved. Now the 
ladies who were the most immediately acquainted 
with him, much to their uneasiness and probably 
(between you and I) at the expence of their chins, 
declare he never shaved at all. 
^ gdiy. That he had fallen asleep reading his own 
I works. This beats everything. Why, Mr^Malthus 
\ would not do that. Poke into any Church in any 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 91 

corner of the Kingdom, where every individual 
within the walls are sound asleep in the very pre- 
face of the sermon, the preacher who made it is 
wide awake. To think my poor friend would have 
written such a sarcasm on himself and which dis- 
covers such ignorance in the art of authorship, and 
authorly feelings ! 

4thiy. Hq talks about refusing Xmas dinners, and 
having the apparitions of geese, &c., haunting him. 
The vein of this sentence denotes it to be written 
by a man appalled by the recollection of one 
standing, as it were, in the shoes of the defunct. 
It breathes the air of one with a tomb in his view ; 
and not of one who, like our friend, has been long 
entombed. 

5thiy. Hq speaks of writing love Letters con amove ; 
and throws something of a slight on Mrs. Rowe's 
works. Our friend, a dissenter or what is almost 
as bad, educated for one, would not have done 
this. Nay. 

gthiy. fje ig made to say (preposterous, he cold in 
his grave ! ) that he had imployed his great mind 
in writing double entendres 1 (By the Lord if we do 
but catch the wretch we'll have him hanged). 



92 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

Double Entendres 1 Merciful Father ! ! ! Why, my 
dear friend, when I, in my conversations with him 
would happen to let out, not wantonly, but in the 
regular run of one's ideas, a sentence, which I 
should quote from my Father, then an aged and 
respectable Gentleman and a Dissenter too, that 
might not altogether square with the most squea- 
mish and maidenly delicacy, his brow would be 
contracted and his mouth would make those 
kinds of convulsive motions that are prognostic of 
a man ready to sp — w. No, no, the man of the 
lowest order in tracing human character cannot 
be duped here. By the way. Double Entendres from 
a Man in love ! Too absurd, too absurd ! that he 
should frequent the Stews ! It makes me stew to 
think on it. 

ythiy. Borrows money of his friends. That won't do, 
neither. You and I, my charitable friend, would 
do as much as most men in the way of friendship. 
But when we reflect on the forlorn state of poor 

H 's (this is no Farce, by all that's sacred) 

mind, his recent moping melancholy and his 
patter about his "Mistress's eye brows," we 
should not have been silly enough to have lent 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 93 

him money to have played at chuck-farthing with, 
or to have wasted it in some such wayward way. 
Besides he would never have thought of borrow- 
ing money, when he knew he had occasion for 
none. With respect to dress, in his gayest days he 
never was much famed as a beau : and a man in 
love, deep, too, as he was, has an immemorial 
sanction from Ovid down to himself to be slattern. 
Rags and Slovenry are the ornaments, the high- 
day livery of the tender passion. With respect to 
food, he wanted none that bakers know, or cooks 
can conjure up. He could receive no enjoyment 
(as some folks can) on Turkey dinners. Eat in 
prospective Feasts he could not partake, and feel 
exultation in writing about them in a manner 
that made every line look as if it were written 
with grease and gravy. No, no. He had better] 
fare. A smile from his mistress was a dozen din- 
ners to him. And the last words of her last Billet 
such as / 

'^ Adieu, i 

Your ever faithful I 

Laura," | 
supported him, to my knowledge, till the next I 



94 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

' time he saw her. What are money^ food, and 

\ ' raiment to such a man ! I wish he had Hved ! He 

would have cost us less than his death will. For 

we shall yet have to pay his bills, which he, poor 

; man, doubtless in his lifetime did pay; but, his 

j tricking trades-people knowing the state he was 

I in, tho' without knowing, as we did, the fair and 

\ unfortunate cause of it, never, I venture to assert, 

I gave receipts for the money they had. However I 

shall not grudge to pay my share. You know tis 

the last thing we can do for him. I fear^I jhall_be 

prolix. But how captivating the subject ! 

gthiy. (c Ideas thin, attenuated, disembodied spirit." 

Apply to this what has been suggested in my 

4}^^ Remark. 

{)thiy. ]sjo body could make head or tail of his con- 
I versation? It might be so to such a body as 
f wrote this pitiful sarcasm. We, who are judges of 
j good argument, know that he was all illuraina- 
\ tion: lucidus ordo was his maximus Apollo; more 
,1 especially — latterly. 

lO^^^y- He was a man of spirit in his better days. 
He therefore would have been ashamed on his 
own account and much more so as an exampl? for 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 95 

the well being of society, to cast out of human 
conduct the habit of wenching. Whereas our poor 
sneaking moralist (A Quaker, by G — d !) would 
debauch the lips of our friend by presuming he 
uttered his worse than sneer on the noble habit, 
by pretending that it was a deviation of moral 
rectitude. 

I shall pass by the wit and jokes, for the fellow is 
clever there, and come to my more serious charges 
against this felonious Scribbler. 
llthiy. Fearful that some one may, some time or 
other, detect this fraud, he paves the way for his 
defence, by beginning in a half-doubting manner, | 
and talking about appearances being against my j 
Friend being alive. In G — d's name, a man must | 
be either dead or alive. This very circumstance ; 
opens to my mind a field of conjecture. For when - 
I consider that the writer wants to insinuate that 

poor H (Have a care, Mr. Lamb. Strive to 

tread lightly on the ashes of the dead, especially 
of the 7nurdered dead). I mean most seriously by 

Mr. H no other than my deceased Friend Mr. 

WiUiam Hazlitt. I say the writer wants to insinu- 
ate that he has left no property except a few con- 



\ 



96 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

temptible moveables that for their sizCj or want of 
value, were not worthy to be purloined by him. 
But yet he values those things with consummate 
artifice. 

V^- The picture of the old Woman not above 
2 or 3 feet square of canvas to be valued at 
£5 whereas the large Count upon Canvas at 
only 15 shillings. I being an Housekeeper and 
, having lately paid £2. 17. 3 J, bating discount, for 
f a new Hall Cloth, know full well that the canvas 
; in question would more easily and with less ex- 
i pence be painted for a Floor Cloth — in conse- 
quence of the dear man having paid one side of it 
so unmercifully with paint — than a piece of un- 

painted canvas. I think it would do nicely for your 
f 

Pantry. You know how partial he was to your 

I Pantry. To be sure the picture, like a cork in a 

j bottle, would be troublesome to get out; and 

I more troublesome to guess how it got in. 

/ The Nymph & Satyr our keen Impost er says is^ 

something indecent forsooth. He that talk'd just 

I now about our Friend loving Double Entendres ! ! 

The 4^^' 5^^' & 6^^ articles of the pitiful Inventory 

that has been artfully saved from the cupidity of 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 97 

this ( ) (fill up the blank as you like, I 

have exhausted abuse) — these articles I say are 
severe sarcasms on our Friend as a Painter and as 
an Author. 

My heart has been so overcharged with grief for 
our loss that I have passed over what has been 
said against me, but surely I may be allowed to 
say that where in a note he accuses me of not 
having much feeling of Heart — he is very cruel. 
Gracious Heaven — not possess feeling of Heart! 
I that wrote -to you, (and the wretch some how or 
other, God knows how, must have seen the Let- 
ter) a Letter written in an agony of sorrow (but I 
am a man of sorrows) as if my heart's blood was j 
staining the paper:— I no feeling of heart when 
you must remember how we both " bedewed his 
lackered plate." Indeed, indeed — this — this thi 
— thi ^ (But I cannot go on, my tears intercept \ ' 
my sight — my white and damp cambric pocket/ 
hand^- unfortunately has fallen on the ground. — I 
must change the subject. — I no feeling of Heart! 
What would he have? Must I "drink up Eisel? 
Eat a Crocodile ? " 
My dear Sir — what is still worse, he next accuses 



98 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

you of (I am almost ashamed to mention it) — 
accuses you of thieving a small Claude Lorraine 
mirror. He accuse another of a theft ! 

"But the Thief calls the Lawyer a cheat.*' 
Considering now the whole circumstances of the 
case^ particularly his mal-appretiation of the re- 
fuse of our friend's valuable moveables, I am fully 
persuaded that some person very much like him 
has taken possession of his Lodgings immediately 
after his death, and gives himself out to be our 
quondam W. H. A fact that corroborates this in- 
ference is this. "1 met William Hazlitt yester- 
day/' says my friend D'^- Y — — s. That is im- 
possible, said I, for he is dead and buried. If ever 
I saw him in my life, he replied, I did see him 
yesterday. You are certainly wrong, rejoined I 
with some vehemence. Then, said the D'^-, I never 
saw two people so much alike. TheD'^- was con- 
vinced, and so the conversation ended. By the 
way — has Emily a sweetheart.'' What a conven- 
ient thing it would be for him to pop into those 
Lodgings and smuggle for themselves all his nice 
goods and chattels. But, my dear sir — far be it 
from me — I only just hint — the girl is good, I 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 99 

dare say — love is blind to the faults of the be- 
loved. I shall close by saying that in no part of 
the long Petition or Letter or what d 'ye call it — 
is it directly asserted, that William Hazlitt is not 
dead. It is all appeal and inference. Don't you 
smoke these — the broad brimm'd hat? Eye? 

12'^ Jany., 1808. 

1HAVE a mighty fancy (cannot you manage 
it ?) to see this Usurper ! But you must mind 
how you go about it. Go to Southampton Build- 
ings, give a single knock as if it were the Baker 
or Tallow Chandler, run upstairs before he has 
time to run off or hide himself, or before anybody 
can say he is not at home. When you nab him : 
ask him to come to see me next Sunday. Say I am 
a very stupid fellow : can hardly see one man from 
another, &c. My motive is this — to conyince some 
incredulous friends that will have it he is alive or 
that (as you seem to say, of which more anon) he 
still walks. If he come, I will note down all the 
points of his exterior and interior that differ from 
poor Hazlitt, which will be confirmations strong. 
If he do not come all the world will believe his 



Q. 



100 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

death^ for all the world know that he could always 
smell an Aitch-bone 4 miles off. He has done it a 
hundred times. Remember I don't ask you or 
your sister to come too.f Not I 

Joseph Hume. 

. IS Jany., 1808, at 10^ o Clock. 

I SHOULDN'T wonder if the Lambs were to 
pop upon us (Mrs. Hume) next Sunday at 4 
o'clock^ just as the Beef is smoaking on the Ta- 
ble ? ^'^I dare say they will (my dear) if it is at all 
a tolerable day : they have not been here some 
time." 

11 o Clock, 13 Jan., 1808. 

I THANK you for your opinions. I entirely 
agree with them. But alas ! you have hung 
yourself on a peg from which weightier persons 
have fallen. 

How Jineh/ (says Sterne)^ how finely can we reason 

upon mistaken facts. I wish he did walk^ if only 

to tweak the nose of him who has supplanted 

I him. Alas^ his earthly "table is full'* : — he is — 

"where he is eaten." 

J. H. 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 101 

Excuse me : in my last note I forgot the black 
sealing wax, &c. : but sorrow, heart-felt sorrow, 
attends not to punctilios. 
[E?idorsed] 
Mr. Lamb. 

The group closes with a comparatively brief note 
from Hume to Hazlitt, deprecating the indirect 
manner in which certain persons have been mak- 
ing efforts to defame him, and particularly warn- 
ing him against Lamb. Lamb's letter, to which 
Hume refers, is, I conclude, that of the 12th 
January already introduced : — 

14. 

DEAR Sir, — I don't know what a parcel of 
your Friends, or rather foes, are about, but 
I the other day received in the form of a Petition 
some stuff and farrago about your death : and I 
have had sent me this morning by a very mysteri- 
ous conveyance a Letter not signed (I enclose it), 
but which I would swear is Mr. Lamb's writing. 
I don't like that Lamb ; Look to him ; I hate 
snakes in the grass. I say let a man, if he has a 
grudge against a friend, out with it ; and not be 



102 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

scribbling and scrawling backwards & forwards 
every day or two^ and secretly abusing one. For 
God's sake come down here, and convince those 
silly fellows, to say the least of it, that talk about 
your death, that you are alive. 

I Yours until death, 

Joseph Hume. 

/ p. S. — ''A living dog is better than a dead 

\Lion." — Solomon, 
To W. Haditt, Esq. 



HAZLITT'S 
EARLIER MARRIED LIFE 



,f^ 



HAZLITT'S 

EARLIER MARRIED LIFE 

AND RELATIONS WITH PATMORE 

SO we part with one of the oddest episodes 
in the entire range of the Lamb corres- 
pondence^ and pass on to a letter of three 
foho pages, written by HazUtt, from SaHsbury_, to 
his wife staying with the Lambs. It may not be 
an exaggeration to speak of it as one of the most 
remarkable, pleasantest, and wholesomest that 
remain to us. I attribute it to April, 1809- The 
Lambs did not go into Wiltshire till the autumn. 

15. 

W. HAZLITT TO HIS WIFE. 

[Salisbury, April, 1809.^ 
Sunday evening. 

MY DEAR Sarah, — I begin on a large sheet 
of paper though I have nothing new to 
fill a half one. Both parcels of prints came safe, & 
I need hardly say that I was glad to see them, 
& that I thank you exceedingly for getting them 
for me. I am much obliged to you for your trouble 
in this as well as about the pictures. Your last 



106 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

letter but one I did not receive in time to have 
come up to see them before Friday (the day then 
fixed for the sale), & though I got your letter on 
Friday time enough to have been with you yester- 
day morning, I did not feel disposed to set out. 
The day was wet & uncomfortable, & the cata- 
logue did not tempt me so much as I expected. 
There were a parcel of Metaus & Terburghs & 
boors smoking, & ladies at harpsichords, which 
seemed to take up as much room as the St. 
Cecelia, the Pan & St. George, the Danae & the 
Ariadne in Naxos. Did Lamb go to the sale, & 
what is the report of the pictures .^^ But I have got 
my complete set of Cartoons, " here I sit with my 
doxies surrounded," & so never mind. I just took 
out my little copy of Rembrandt to look at, & 
was so pleased with it, I had almost a mind to 
send it up, & try whether it might not fetch two 
or three guineas. But I am not at present much 
in the humour to incur any certain expence for an 
uncertain profit. With respect to my painting, I 
go on something like Satan, through moist & dry, 
something glazing & sometimes scumbling, as it 
happens, now on the wrong side of the canvas & 



HAZLITT'S MARRIED LIFE 107 

now on the right, but still persuading myself that 
I have at last found out the true secret of Titian's 
golden hue & the oleaginous touches of Claude 
Lorraine. I have got in a pretty good background, 
& a conception of the ladder which I learned from 
the upping stone on the down, only making the 
stone into gold, & a few other improvements. I 
have no doubt there was such another on the 
field of Luz, & that an upping stone is the genu- 
ine Jacob's ladder. But where are the angels to 
come from } That 's another question, which I am 
not yet able to solve. My dear Sarah, I am too 
tired & too dull to be witty, & therefore I will 
not attempt it. I did not see the superscription of 
the wrapping paper till this morning, for which I 
thank you as much as for the prints. You are a 
good girl, & I must be a good boy. I have not 
been very good lately. I do not wish you to over- 
stay your month, but rather to set off on the Fri- 
day. You will, I hope, tell me in your next about 
M"- Holcroft & the books. If the sale had been 
the ^S^^f I intended to have come up, & brought 
them with me. Our new neighbour arrived the 
day after you went. I have heard nothing of her 



108 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

but that her name is Armstead^ nor seen any- 
thing of her till yesterday & the day before, on 
one of which days she passed by our house in a 
blue pelisse, & on the other in a scarlet one. She 
is a strapper, I assure you. Little Robert & his 
wife still continue in the house. They returned 
the coals, but I sent them back, thinking they 
would be badly off perhaps. But yesterday they 
walked out together, he as smart as a buck, &.. 
she skipping & light as a doe. It is supper time, 
my dear, & I have been painting all day, & all 
day yesterday, & all the day before, & am very, 
very tired, & so I hope you will let me leave off 
here, & bid you good night. I inclose a 1,£ note 
to Lamb. If you want another, say so. But I hope 
your partnership concern with M'^- Phillips will 
have answered the same purpose. 

I am ever yours affectionately, 

W. PIazlitt. 
Before you come away, get Lamb to fix the pre- 
cise time of their coming down here. 
[Ejidorsed] 
Mr. Lamb, 

India House, London, 



HAZLITT'S MARRIED LIFE 109 

The Hazlitts had had several disappointments 
before their only living representative appeared 
in 1811^ and produced that singularly fine letter 
from Lamb printed in all the editions. The sub- 
joined copy of doggerel verses seems to have j 
been composed by some one intimate with the 
circle on the same auspicious occasion : — 
There lives at Winterslow a man of such 
Rare talents and deep learning, that hy much 
Too wise he 's counted hy his country neighbours ; 
And all his learned literary labours 
Occasion give for many a wild surtnise. 
Even his pei^son in their rustic eyes 
Has somewhat strange in it, his sallow looks, 
His deep oerhanging brows when oer his books 
(Which written are in characters unknown) 
He pores whole hours with a most solemn frown. 
And then this wise mans wife^ they all ivell know 
Is sister to a learned Doctor too. 
But we will leave the rustics to their wonder, 
And simply tell what truly happened under 
This 7vise mans roof. He and his wife believd, 
If by no inauspicious star deceivd. 
The time was very fa^t approaching when 



no LAMB AND HAZLITT 

(To crown the labours of his brain and pen) 
A nameless Spirit, for whose sake his braifis 
And pen he wore out, would reward his pains 
By visible appearance in their view. 
It was not from the magic art they drew 
This irference. Lo / when the Spirit came, 
The long expected One withoid a name, 
For whose sweet sake all this was undergone. 
They call'd it William and their own dear Son. 
These lines might be anybody's — but a pg^et'sj 
the writing is that of Mrs. Hazlittj and it is prob- 
ably a copy. 

Hazlitt^ when the subjoined note was written, 
was probably preparing those Lectures which he 
subsequently delivered at the London Institution 
in 1812j and which are described in the Memoirs 
of 1867. Whatever difficulties and drawbacks he 
may have suffered, the position taken up by him 
at this time was in some respects superior to 
what the same class or classes of employment 
conferred at a later period, except in a few cases. 
Competition was far less severe, and the pay was 
better. When my father had been some years on 
the press, the system of farming the parliamen- 



HAZLITT^S MARRIED LIFE ill 

tary reports was commenced by Doogood^ a na- 
tive of Bodmin^ in Cornwall. My father thought 
his name a ciiriosa infelicitas, for he did others a 
good deal of harm and himself very little good. 
Hardy^ to whom Hazlitt here addressed himself, 
is presumed to be the same fellow with whom 
Lamb is found in coi-respondence in 1824 on be- 
half of Miss Mary Hazlitt, one of the group of 
lady-novelists, who, about this date, worried him 
nearly to death. He appears to have been, unless 
I am mistaken in his identity, a person possessed 
of a certain share of influence, as well as one of 
those obliging characters in various walks of life, 
with whom necessitous men of genius open rela- 
tions. Usually, if they are not professional money- 
lenders, they are tailors ; occasionally we meet 
with them in the ranks of butchers and crockery- 
dealers ; but Hardy was a boot-maker in Fleet 
Street. In 1824 he was to be found at Queen's 
Square, Pimlico ; possibly he had then retired, 
and was turning his attention to what Elia terms 
somewhere the Bell-Letters. 



112 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

16. 

Winterslow, 
Salisbury. 

DEAR SiR^ — I was obliged to leave London 
without discharging my promise. The rea- 
son of which was that I was myself disappointed 
in not receiving 20£ which was due to me^ 10<£ 
for a picture^ & 10<£ for revising a manuscript. I 
am at present actually without money in the 
house. If you can defer it till October^ when I 
shall be in London to deliver some Lectures, by 
which I shall pick up some money, I shaU esteem 
it a favour, and shall be glad to pay you the in- 
terest from the time I was in London last. Hop- 
ing this delay will be no particular inconvenience, 
& that you will think it unavoidable on my part, 
I remain. 

Yours respectfully, 
Sunday evening. W. Hazlitt. 

\Endorse(r\ 
Mr. Hardy, 
Boot-Maker, 

Fleet Street, London. 



HAZLITT'S MARRIED LIFE 113 

In the correspondence with Patmore^ printed in 
the Memoirs of 1867, under June, 1822, Hazlitt 
is found pressing him to go to Southampton 
Buildings, where the Walkers kept a lodging- 
house, as we have so often heard, and endeavour 
to discover how matters stood in regard to Sarah 
Walker. It accordingly appears that Patmore was 
in March, 1822, an inmate — whether on his own 
account or Hazlitt's it is difficult to say, but he 
went there at his friend's request, and was a 
stranger to the family. The divorce was pending, 
and his correspondent was anxious to learn whe- 
ther Miss Walker was likely to receive favour- 
ably a proposal of marriage. Oddly enough, Pat- 
more seems to have played a part analogous to 
that of one of the characters in Maupassant's Ce 
Cochon de Morin, and, still more oddly, Hazlitt 
was not apparently displeased by the action of 
his ambassador or scout, who, in his report, was 
at least not wanting in candour : at any rate what 
came to his ears helped to disillusionize his prin- 
cipal, and to bring the farce to a climax. So far, 
so good. 
We gain our knowledge of some of these partic- 



114 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

ulars from a MS. entirely in Hazlitt's hand, ex- 
tending to eleven pages, and forming a Diary 
from March 4th to l6th (1822), in which he has 
registered, so far as we can judge, the proceed- 
ings of Patmore during that period ; and the nar- 
rative essentially differs from the one already in 
type, the only MS. of which is believed to be in 
Patmore's hand. The present one is very care- 
lessly written, and in some places is almost illeg- 
ible. It has the advantage of being much briefer 
than the text generally known, to which it may 
be treated as a sort of sequel, and it contains sev- 
eral interesting literary and theatrical allusions 
peculiar to itself. To what extent these are gen- 
uine records of the heroine's opinions, however, 
who shall say? From the manner in which Miss 
Walker refers to Procter, it is apparent that she 
speaks from personal knowledge ; he probably vis- 
ited Hazlitt at Southampton Buildings. 
Whatever may be thought of Patmore's share in 
the affair, his sjnnpathy with Hazlitt, real or as- 
sumed, as well as that of Sheridan Knowles, was, 
no doubt, eminently welcome and serviceable at 
the time. 



HAZLITT'S MARRIED LIFE 115 

As regards the orthography of Patmore's name, I 
observe that in the list of contributors to Black- 
wood's Magazine, drawn up about 1825, and printed 
in WilHs's Current Notes for October, 1851, occurs : 
'^Pattmore, Charles, Pawnbroker, Ludgate Hill." 
This was, of course, the father of Peter George, 
and his enrolment must have been Sijeu d' esprit — 
probably by his son. 

The T. so frequently referred to below as Miss 
Walker's favoured suitor may have been the same 
persoh who was connected with Covent Garden 
Theatre, and who is mentioned in a letter to Pat- 
more as having power to give or get tickets of 
admission. In one place the name, sometimes in- 
dicated by the initial, and in others obliterated, 
has been left intact, and appears to be Tomkins. 
Besides the Mr. F., a plain F. occurs in one place 
— whether another lodger, is not at all clear ; but 
he was evidently a curious character. The alpha- 
bet was capable of yielding a different initial, more 
especially as Mr. F. is occasionally introduced with- 
out a prefix. 

I have stated that Sarah Walker married well, like 
her sister Mrs. Roscoe, although neither soared 



116 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

so high as that other tailor's daughter^ Nancy 
Parsons, who, after being the Duke of Graf- 
ton's mistress, became Viscountess Maynard. 
The MS. commences without any title at the top 
of the first leaf. The asterisks denote unreadable 
words or passages, the character of the writing 
resembling shorthand and only my familiarity 
with it has enabled me to decipher as much as I 
have done. 



LIBER AMORIS. PART II. 



LIBER AMORIS 

PART II 

MARCH 4. [1821.] M^- F. goes to M^- G. 
S[outhampton] B[uil dings] at my re- 
quest to see the lodgings. Sees M"^^- 
W[alkerJ who is very communicative — says 
there is no one but herself & her daughter — her 
eldest daughter married one of the M"^- Roscoes 
of Liverpool — Gentlemen generally staid there 2 
or 3 years — the gentleman that last occupied the 
front room staid there three years — a M'^- Crom- 
bie (no^ the person that occupied it was a M"^- 
Tomkins^ who did not stay there quite so long). 
She concluded M"^- F. from the country & let the 
front-room, second floor, to him at 15s. a week. 
The back-room (my poor room) was empty at 14s. 
a week. 

March 5. — Goes. Is introduced into the back-par- 
lour — meets Miss shawl'd and bonneted going 
out to meet Tomkins. M'^^- W. has my name up as 
having lodged there & says that except when I 
am at Salisbury, I lodge there still — speaks of 



120 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

the quantity of money I got by my writings, & of 
several presents I had given her daughter. 
She returns, & takes off her bonnet & shawl, 
throws them down on M"^- F.'s great-coat which 
he had put in a chair. This is her first move, this 
putting these little matters together & mingling 
persons by proxy. She then went out & gave one 
of her set looks at the door. 

March 6. — The next morning she comes up to 
light his fire, & he wanting his pantaloons 
brushed, she comes to take them out of his 
hands, as he gives them to her at the door. She 
is not dressed to wait at breakfast, but is very 
gracious & smiling, & repulses a kiss very gently. 
She afterwards expressly forgives this freedom, & 
is backwards & forwards all day. On his asking 
for a newspaper or a book, she brings him up the 
Round Table, with my name & sincere regards 
written on the title-page. 

March 7. — This morning she is dressed to wait 
on the gentlemen. The day before it was too 
early. Nothing occurs, but she regularly answers 
the bell, yet does not bring up the things that 
are wanted, smirks & backs out of the rooin iu 



LIBER AMORIS 121 

her wonted manner. A circumstance happens de- 
cisive of her lying character. M"^- F.^ going into 
the parlour for his umbrella, met her going out 
to meet Tomkins, her mother repeating the old 
cant, that it was too late to go to M'^- Roscoe's. 
She, however, went, & her father after her, prob- 
ably to watch & entrap Tomkins But F., going 
upstairs again, found Betsey in the room, and on 
telling her the bed was not made, she said her 
sister told her it was, but not turned down. This 
was no doubt a lie, to leave the job to her, & be 
there on his return. 

At night Miss was gone to bed, & on being asked 
next morning, whether she did not retire sooner 
than usual, said " she sometimes went to bed ear- 
lier & sometimes later." This was just like one 
of her commonplace answers on all occasions. 
M"^* F. went down for a glass of water, & the 
brother (Cajah, as they call him) was there. He 
observed M'^- H. always drank water, & they 
didn't like it at the Southampton Arms. He 
continued, " I was rather an odd man, a little 
flighty," he believed, & added smiling, " I was in 
love." F. did not ask with whom, but said the 



122 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

manner and tone convinced him more than any 
thing that the whole was a regularly understood 
thing, & that there was nothing singular in gen- 
tlemen's being in love in that house. 
March 8_, Saturday. — M'^- F. got a paper, & lent 
it to the Father to read. Saw Miss several times. 
In the evening pressed her to take tea, which 
she declined, but he followed her to the door, & 
kissed her several times on the staircase, at which 
she laughed. While this passed, he had hold of 
one hand, & the other was at liberty ; but she did 
not once attempt to raise it so as to make even a 
show of resistance. This is what she calls " being 
determined to keep every lodger at a proper dis- 
tance." Her aunt must know that she has not 
stuck to her advice. 

March 9- — Miss was in close conference with 
Tomkins at a landing just opposite her own door. 
I wondered what divine music he poured into 
her ear, to which my words were harsh discord. 
What, I thought, would I not give to hear those 
words of that honeyed breath that sinks into her 
heart, that I might despair, & feel how just has 
been her preference ! The next morning sure 



LIBER AMORIS 123 

enough I had a specimen of this sort of conversa- 
tion. " to which her ear she seriously incHnes." 
Not T.'sj but any man's. F. insisted on her drink- 
ing tea with him^ declaring he would not sit 
alone, that he was not used to that sort of thing ; 
and that if she did not stay, he would not have 
any tea at all, & would take his hat, & walk out. 
By that terrible threat she was awed ; she did 
not " shew an independent spirit," & let the gen- 
tleman go, but said if she must stop, she would 
sit on the chair next the door instead of the one 
next to him. Wonderful delicacy ! F. then got up, 
& shut the door, that she might not be exposed 
to the draught, & Emma, who was waiting on 
the stairs, went down to announce this new ar- 
rangement. "Sarah, they all knew, never staid 
five minutes with any lodger but me." She then 
poured out the tea, & the talk commenced. 
F. asked her which of the Essays in the Round 
Table was a favourite with her, to which she 
seemed at a loss for an answer. He said he thought 
that on Methodism was a good one, & asked what 
she thought of the remark that " David was the 
first Methodist " } 



124 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

She laughed, & said, " M"^- H. was full of his re- 
marks." 

F. answered, " Did she mean on the ladies ? " 
<( No — M"^- H. thought very little about the ladies 
— indeed she believed he cared very little about 
them." 

F. " In a prose writer this was not so necessary ; 
but a poet could hardly do without them. What 
did she think of M"^- Moore's Loves of the Angels ? " 
She thought it impious to make angels fall in love 
with women. 

" Had she any of Lord Byron's works ? " 
She had read Cain, which she thought very fine 
(I think I know which part). 

*' Had she read Don Juan ? " " No ; for her sister 
said it was impious." 

F. repeated the word Impious, and laughed, at 
which she laughed. 

" Had M"^- F. read any of M"^- Procter's poetry ? " 
He could not say ; on which she explained M''- 
Barry Cornwall. 
" Oh yes ; had she ? " 

" Yes ; she had Marcian Colonna & Mirandola, & 
had seen Mirandola. M.^- Procter was a particuHr 



LIBER AMORIS 125 

friend of M"^- Hazlitt's, & had very gentle & pleas- 
ing manners. Miss Foote played Isidore, when she 
saw it ; she was a pretty girl, but no actress. She 
liked Miss Stephens as a singer ; her voice was 
very clear & good ; but her acting was deficient." 
" Did she like going to the play ?" " She was fond 
of tragedy, but did not think comedy worth going 
to see. She had not been to Drury Lane." — 
This was a hint that she should Hke to go. We 
shall see. 

And so she cackled on with her new gallant, T, 
being in the street with her every night & I in 
hell for this grinning, chattering idiot. F. said he 
is sure she is quite incapable of understanding 
any real . . . , & shut up her lips with me for 
fear of being found out for what she is, a little 
mawkish simpleton . . . but it was more stupidity 
than unkindness. 

She rose to go in about ten minutes, & then, be- 
ing pressed, sat down again for another quarter of 
an hour; & then said she must go to her sister's 
to take home the child. F. kissed her & let her 
go, I thought no lodger but me was ever to kiss 
her again but T. 



126 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

The next morning she came up to answer the 
call, but being in her bed-gown would not come 
in, but ran up with the breakfast things in ten 
minutes, drest all in her best. . . . decoy ! Damn'd, 
treble damn'd idiot ! when shall I burn her out of 
my thoughts ? — yet I like to hear about her — 
that she had her bed-gown or her ruff on, that 
she stood, or sat, or made some insipid remark, is 
to me a [blessing ?] from Heaven — to know that 
she is a [? nane] or an idiot is better than nothing. 
Were I in Hell, my only consolation would be to 
hear of her. In Heaven to see her would be my 
only comfort. 

March 10. — In the evening Betsey waited at tea, 
her sister, she said, being busy. M'^- F. went down 
afterwards, & sat with the family in the back par- 
lour, first opposite to her & then next to her. She 
said little, but laughed and smiled, & seemed quite 
at her ease. 

Oh low life ! God deliver me from thee ! This was 
with a person, a perfect stranger to her, & whose 
only introduction was that he obtruded himself 
upon her & her friends without ceremony & with- 
out respect under the pretext that he was too dull 



LIBER AMORIS 127 

to sit alone. Tomkins^ a lover of a different stamp, 
will ... be seen with her, or come near the 
house, so that she reconciles the familiar and the 
distant — all but true regard, which requires a re- 
turn, which she cannot feel. Me, poor tortured 
worm, she rejected on this account. I asked F. 
how she looked. He said '^'^ she had more flesh on 
her bones than her mother." 

On rising to go upstairs he saw three books 
piled on the drawing [room-table .^] & on going 
towards them, M'^^- W. said they were the books 
he had asked Sarah to lend him, one of mine & 
two of Procter's. He was going to take them, 
but said he thought he had better not, as he 
wanted a good night's rest, & they might pre- 
vent him. M^^- W. acceded [to] this, intending her 
daughter to bring them up in the morning. 
March 11. — She came up with the books drest. 
F. asked her to point out a passage in Marcian 
Colonna, which she liked. She declined this, & 
said she admired the whole. She in fact, I dare- 
say, had not read a word of it. He then read some 
of it, & on her coming up again pretended it was 
so ... it had made him sentimental & melan- 



128 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

choly, so that he should be obliged to turn to 
M"^- Sterne. He then said he would look at Miran- 
dola, but he was afraid of venturing on a tragedy, 
so hoped Miss could point out a passage. So she 
took the book, and turning to the place, where 
there was the description of herself, said, "This 
was M'^- H.'s favourite passage." . . . F. said he 
could hardly believe his eyes, when he saw it. 
[He] said, " he thought it very pretty," but could 
not reconcile what she said of its [being] my fa- 
vourite passage with her declaring the day before 
that I cared very little about the ladies, as it was 
all about love. 

She hesitated a little, and then repeated, "but 
\} I] don't think I did," adding, " I don't think 
M"^- H.'s love lasts long," Incomparable piece of 
clockwork ! To suppose that any one could . . . 
in her beforehand is ridiculous. She is not good 
or bad : she is defective in certain faculties that 
belong to human nature, & acts upon others, be- 
cause you can make no impression on her, F. says 
he thinks it would be impossible to offer her 
rudeness, if she did not seem beforehand what 
she was. "Being a thing majestical, it were a vio- 



LIBER^ AMORIS 129 

Icnce^ &c." He kissed her heartily^ & put his arms 
round her neck. 

In the evening she brought up the tea things, but 
said significantly she couldn't stay then, as there 
was nobody in the house but her father. He came 
to me, and found she was gone out to get M. 
some coffee, that is, to meet Tomkins. If she has 
two, why not three ? Her sister was sitting down- 
stairs with the child, when M^- F. bolted into the 
room for his umbrella, & as she had her back to 
him, he mistook her for M"^^- W., & said, ^^ How 
do you do. Ma'am ?" She seemed a little dissatis- 
fied at such familiarity, but the other said, " It's 
only my sister." 

M"^^- Roscoe was doubtless ashamed & hurt after 
the blow-up with me on account of her attach- 
ment to Tomkins. 

March 12. — The httle idiot came up with the 
breakfast, drest as usual, or (rather) varied, that 
is, she had a cap on & a shawl which I gave her. 
F. had got his Marcian Colonna lying on the chair 
beside him, & when she came in, read her some 
lines, & asked if she remembered them. "No; 
but she had the whole." He then asked her to 



130 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

look at them, and for that purpose she came 
round the table to his side, & on his asking her, 
she sat down. After looking them over, the book 
was laid aside. 

* * ^ ^ * * * 

He told he she would make a pretty nun. That, 
she said, she never should be. She was not made 
to be shut up. F. asked her, if she ever went out, 
& she said, '^ very seldom, & only in the neigh- 
bourhood to see her sister." In the afternoon this 
conversation was renewed in the parlour down- 
stairs, while he [} lay] in bed in the inner room, 
& she was mending a stocking ; & she then de- 
clared she did not like to be confined to the con- 
versation of . . . though she believed the nuns 
had leave to talk to their confessors. F. observed 
that one confessor was hardly enough for fifty or 
sixty nuns. ^'^No?" "If," he said, "there was a 
confessor for every nun ?'' " That indeed ! " said 
the lady of individual attachments. (Half a dozen 
would be nothing.) F. then asked her to go to 
the play. She said she was afraid her mother 
would object to her going with a stranger. 
" Phoo ! nonsense ! that was nothing : she really 



LIBER AMORIS 181 

must go. She should have her choice of any part 
of the house except the one shilling gallery. She 
said her ambition was not so high as that ; no, her 
ambition was not so high, & [she] laughed at this 
as an excellent jest. But any part of the boxes : I 
am exculpated by all this. 

He thought at first she would not talk, but now 
he was convinced she could not. 

* * * -x- -x- ^ * 

¥., speaking of Mr. F., said he seemed out of 
sorts the other evening. She said Mr. F. knew 
his ill-humour had no effect on her, and added, 
" We have not had the pleasure of seeing you in 
an ill-humour yet." F. answered, " Suppose I was 
to give you a specimen." She said, " I hope not, 
till I give you cause." Mr. F., hearing F. above- 
stairs, called out, " Who 's that .'' " F. said, " [me,] 
Sir," on which the other replied gruffly, "Oh, 
't was not you I wanted to see, but somebody else." 

^ ^ ^ * ^ * * 

March 14. — The mild F. is already, I think, in 
force with her, & thinks she likes him, & I shan't 
be able to get her to move. She didn't go to the 
play the other night. Yesterday he says he could 



132 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

make nothing of her. They had a parley in the 
evening. She did not come up with the tea things, 
but_, on ringing afterwards, she answered the bell. 
She wouldn't come in. She could hear where she 
was. F. got up, & sat near her. He began to say 
he was sorry he staid out at night, & was afraid 
she thought him .... She said she was not his 
keeper. [Mr. F. suggested that he wanted some 
one to love him, and that they might keep com- 
pany.] She asked if he thought it would be proper. 
"Oh!" he said, "hang propriety." "What," she 
said, "you wouldn't hang propriety.^" She half 
hangs it and cuts it down again. "Would it be 
seemly.^" "Oh," he said, "as to seemly, there 
was nobody to see them but themselves." While 
this negociation was going on, she kept on his lap 
all the time, & at last said she must go now. But 
she would come & sit with him, when they were 
gone to bed ? She made no promises ; & so it stands. 
Saturday, March 15. — She did not come up in the 
morning ; and nothing was done ; but that, as she 
put down the curtains at night, he kissed her; 
.... She only said, " Let me go. Sir," and retir- 
ing to the door, asked if he would have the fire 



LIBER AMORIS 133 

lighted. She didn't come up again. She was al- 
tered in her manner, & probably trying to make 
something. 

•K- -x- •»• -^ * -H- -x- 

March l6. — [F.] saw nothing of her in the morn- 
ings but asked her to tea — [she] answered ^^she 
never drank tea with gentlemen/' and was high. 
F. was in despair, when, returning home at dusk, 
he met my lady with her muff [ ? walking] along 
Lincoln's Inn Fields by herself. He saw [her] turn 
at the corner of Queen Street to go down toward 
the New Inn. Followed her — asked to accompany 
— she refused — and on his offering to take her 
arm, stood stock still, immoveable, inflexible — like 
herself — & on his saying he wouldn't press her, 
& offering his hand, she gave it him, & then 
went on to her lover. I also am her lover, & will 
live and die for her only, since she can be true to 
any one. 

We seem to be unacquainted with the closing 
scene or stage of this small drama. When the 
volume known as the Liher Amoris was pub- 
lished, the hallucination was apparently dissi- 
pated ; the passion had spent itself ; and the poor. 



134 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

weak little book merely fulfilled the humble 
function of turning the incident to a practical 
account. 

The committal of the story to print is^ no doubt, 
regrettable ; but it helped, I think, to liberate 
Hazlitt from the incubus and the unworthy 
thraldom. He soon regained his mental equili- 
brium, and I need hardly say that he lived to pro- 
duce some of his finest and healthiest work. 
The date at which the Liher Amoris saw the light 
was one when the air was unusually redolent of 
powder. The warfare between the two literary 
camps was particularly keen and bitter. The fatal 
duel between Scott and Lockhart in 1821 had not 
tended to moderate the language of Blackwood. 
The incisive note of Hazlitt to Cadell in 1823, 
first recovered and printed by me, shews that the 
virulence of party spirit was unabated. It must 
have been in the ensuing year that Hazlitt ap- 
peared for the first and last time as a writer of 
verse, and sent from Vevey, in Switzerland, for 
insertion in the Morning Chronicle or Examiner, 
the metrical squib, which is worth insertion as a 
curiosity. 



LIBER^ AMORIS 135 

The following short note accompanies the lines in 
the original : — 

DEAR Black, — Will you insert this, or hand 
it over to J. Hunt ? 

Yours ever, W. H. 
I shall be at home in about a month. I have been 
to Chamouny. 
Vevey, August 31st 

But the communication is addressed outside the 
sheet to Thomas Hodgkin, Esq., l6, Gough 
Square, Fleet Street, London, which is partly 
struck through, and No. 5, Brunswick Terrace, 
White Conduit Street, Pentonvill, substituted. In 
the left hand corner is : Affranchi Jusqu a Calais. 

The Damned Author's Address to his 
Reviewers. 

The rock I'm told on which I split 
Is bad economy ojwit — 
An affectation to be thought 
That tvhich I am 8f yet am not, 
Deep, brilliant, new, S^ all the rest ; 
Help, help, thou great economist 



136 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

Of what thou neer thyself possest, 

Ofjinanciers the ruthless Moloch, 

Dry, plodding, husky, stiff Maculloch ! 

Or to avoid the consequences 

I may incur from corporate dunces, 

I'll write as Allen writes the livelong day j 

Whateer his Lordship says, I'll say — 

(To hint what neer was said before 

Is hut to he set down a bore 

By all the learned Whigs and Dames 

Who fear you shoidd out-write Sir James J- 

I'll swear that every strutting elf 

Is just what he conceives himself, 

Or draws his picture to his life 

As all the world would — and his wife ! 

From Mackintosh I'll nature learn, 

With Sydney Smith false glitter spurn ; 

Lend me, oh ! Brougham, thy modesty, 

Thou, Thomas Moore, simplicity ; 

Mill, scorn of juggling politics ; 

Thy soul of candour, Chevenix ; 

And last, to make my measure full. 

Teach me, great J y, to he dull / 



LIBEB AMORIS 137 

At the time the wi'iter was intent on other Uter- 
aiy work of a more congenial and permanent cast. 
His Sketches of the Picture Galleries, partly repub- 
lished from the London Magazine, appeared in 1 824?, 
and may help to account for his inquiry from an 
anonymous correspondent as to the whereabouts 
of a certain painting: — 

[1823?] 

DEAR Sir, — I will be much obliged to you 
if you will let me know the name & sub- 
ject of Guerin's picture at Lucien Buonaparte's, 

Yours truly, 

W, Hazlitt. 



A PACKET OF NEW LAMB 
NOTES AND VERSES 



A PACKET OF NEW LAMB 
NOTES AND VERSES 

LET us once more return to Lamb. Here is a 
note from him, in the Dalston days, to a 
■^ correspondent who had just pubHshed a 
volume of stories, about which the recipient, as 
usual, tries to say something acceptable. 

[Dalston, 1820 (? J] 

TO — ■ 

DEAR Sir, — I have received a volume of 
bright little stories, which I do not know or 
have heard, but guess to be yours. Whosever they 
are, both myself & Mary have been much pleased 
with them. The style is many times original & 
uncommon, rich stuff that would have beat out 
& spread over a much greater space if the author 
had not disdained economy. We are at Dalston 
at present, but I shall hope to see you ere long, 
to renew acquaint^^- The fact is, I am not strong 
enough for visiting. — Edward and Edmond, and 
the last tale of all are the favourites. 

C. Lamb. 



142 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

The subjoined note, without any indication of the 
person to whom it was addressed, may refer to a 
proposed meeting between Lamb and John How- 
ard Payne, the American dramatist, of whom 
Lamb heard or saw a good deal in 1822-23. 

TO 

[6 May, 1823.^ 

DEAR Sir, — I am coming to town on Thurs- 
day to meet a friend from Paris, or I should 
gladly have accepted your invitation. I will take 
my chance of seeing you as I go to office to-mor- 
row morning. I shall previously have breakfasted. 

Yours truly, 

Tuesday. ^' ^^^^^ 

A letter to an hitherto unknown India House col- 
league and correspondent is of some interest, as 
it furnishes the recipient with literary advice and 
ourselves with a better notion of Lamb's views of 
the periodical literature of his day, about which 
Mr. Marter's communication had apparently so- 
licited light. The accompanying " Sonnet " must be 
taken for what it is worth. 

* The date is in the hand of the recipient. 



NEW LAMB NOTES & VERSES 143 

TO W. MARTER. 

DEAR MarteRj — I have just reC^ your let- 
ter, having returned from a month's holy- 
days. My exertions for the London are, tho' not 
dead, in a dead sleep for the present. If your 
club like scandal, Blackwood's is your magazine ; 
if you prefer light articles, and humorous without 
offence, the New Monthly is very amusing. The 
best of it is by Horace Smith, the author of the 
Rejected Addresses. The Old Monthly has more of 
matter, information, but not so merry. I cannot 
safely recommend any others, as not knowing 
them, or knowing them to their disadvantage. Of 
Reviews, beside what you mention, I know of none 
except the Review on Hounslow Heath, which I 
take it is too expensive for your ordering. Pity 
me, that have been a Gentleman these four weeks, 
and am reduced in one day to the state of a ready 
writer. I feel, I feel my gentlemanly qualities fast 
oozing away — such as a sense of honour, neck- 
cloths twice a day, abstinence from swearing, &c. 
The desk enters into my soul. 
See my thoughts on business next Page. 



144 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

SONNET.* 

Whojlrst invented work ? — and bound the free 

And holy day -rejoicing Spirit dorvn 

To the ever-haunting importunity 

Of Business in the green fields, and the Torvn — 

To plough, loom, spade, and (oh most sad !) 

To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood ? 

Who but the Being unblest, alien from goody 

Sabbathless Satan ! He, who his unglad 

Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings. 

That round and round incalculably reel — 

For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel — 

In that red realm from whence are no returnings ; 

Where toiling Sf tur7noiling ever S^ aye 

He and his Thoughts keep pensive worky-day. 

With many recollections of pleasanter times^ my 

old compeer, happily released before me. Adieu. 

C. Lamb. 
E. L H. 

19 My, [18U'] t 

* Comp. The Lambs, 1897, p. 152. 

t The year is supplied by the post-mark. Endorsed : W. 

Marter, Esqi^e, Nockholt, near Seven Oaks, Kent. 



NEW LAMB NOTES & VERSES 145 
The whole interest of the subjoined scrap lies in 
the two-fold fact that it is the only relic of the 
kind to an intimate official acquaintance^ and 
appears to indicate to what department of the 
India House Evans belonged. His entrance on 
the India House staff is noted in a letter to 
Coleridge of 1796. There the writer tells his cor- 
respondent that his then new colleague belonged 
to a branch of the family, which he used to 
know ; but a gentleman of the same name, and a 
Cambro-Briton, was, in Lamb's short stay at the 
South Sea House, cashier there, and was, from 
Lamb's account in his paper on the subject, 
a person of literary and antiquarian tastes. As in 
the letter to Coleridge Lamb's colleague at the 
India House is described as "^"^ young Evans," he 
may have been a son of the other ; and the 
cashier may have been the collector of the valu- 
able illustrated Byron now in the British Mu- 
seum. Was this family related to the Rev. Mr. 
Evans of Tavistock, where Hazlitt's son (my fa- 
ther) was at school in 1824 .^^ Compare TJie Lambs, 
1897, p. 35, where a John Evans of Montgomery- 
shire is mentioned as a Blue-Coat boy about 



146 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

Lamb's time — perhaps another son of him of the 
South Sea House. 

TO W. EVANS. 

[Before 1825.] 
T>^ E. — The enclosed (from Barry Cornwall) is 
yours. 

W. Evans, Esq., C. Lamb. 

Baggage Warehouse. 

The three next communications are to Hone 
(about the Extracts fro7n the Garrick Plat/s), Basil 
Montagu^ and a third party unnamed. The latter 
two belong to a class of letter, to which Lamb 
had a rather special dislike_, as he even went out 
of his way, and would incur personal expense, to 
avoid asking favours from friends. 
I am not sure whether it is generally known that 
Hone's daughter Matilda, whose name occurs 
more than once in the later correspondence, mar- 
ried Mr. J. S. Burn, the theatrical bookseller in 
Bow Street, Covent Garden, and the author of 
several interesting and valuable works. The Fable 
enclosed refers to one of Lamb's schoolfellows at 
Christ's Hospital. 



NEW LAMB NOTES & VERSES 147 

TO WILLIAM HONE. 

[1826.] 

DEAR HoNEj — having occasion to write to 
Clarke I put in a bit to you. I see no Ex- 
tracts in this N°- You should have three sets in 
hand, one long one in particular from Atreus and 
Thyestes, terribly fine. Don't spare 'em ; with 
fragments, divided as you please, they'll hold out 
to Xmas. What I have to say is enjoined me most 
seriously to say to you by Moxon. Their country 
customers grieve at getting the Table Book so late. 
It is indispensable it should appear on Friday. Do 
it but once, & you '11 never know the difference. 

Fable 
A boy at my school, a cunning fox, for one penny 
ensured himself a hot roll & butter every morn- 
ing for ever. Some favor' d ones were allowed a 
roll & butter to their breakfasts. He had none. 
But he bought one one morning. What did he 
do ? he did not eat it. But cutting it in two, sold 
each one of the halves to a half-breakfasted Blue 
Boy for his whole roll to-morrow. The next day 
he had a whole roll to eat, and two halves to 



148 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

swap with other two boys^ who had eat their 
cake & were still not satiated, for whole ones to- 
morrow. So on ad infinitum. By one morning's ab- 
stinence he feasted seven years after. 

Application 
Bring out the next N°- on Friday, for country 
correspondents' sake. I[t] will be one piece of ex- 
ertion, and you will go right ever after, for you 
will have just the time you had before, to bring it 
out ever after by the Friday. 

You don't know the difference in getting a thing 
early. Your correspondents are your authors. 
You don't know how an author frets to know the 
world has got his contribution, when he finds it 
not on his breakfast table. 

Once in this case is Ever without a grain of 
trouble afterW^^* 
I wont like you or speak to you if you dont try it 

once. 

Yours, on that condition, 

C. Lamb. 



TO- 



D 



EAR Sir, — I feel ashamed at this applica- 
tion to you. I have no right to make it. 



NEW LAMB NOTES & VERSES 149 

But I feel I cannot resist it. I have a God Son, a 
Nephew^ a very fine youth, who is out of employ. 
The establishment with which he was connected 
is suddenly broke up. He wants employment. If 
by your city interest you could introduce him into 
any Clerkly employment, how much I should feel 
obliged ! I hate myself for asking a favour. I would 
not for myself. Pray, believe me that if this is not 
in your power, never shall I cease to love and re- 
spect you. 

C. Lamb. 

TO BASIL MONTAGU. 

DEAR B. M., — You are a kind soul of your- 
self, and need no spurring, but if you can 
help a worthy man you will have two worthy men 
obliged to you. I am writing from Hone's possible 
Coffee House, which must answer, if he can find 
means to open it, which unfortunately flag — We 
propose a little subscription — but I know how 
tender a subject the pocket is — Your Advice may 
be important to him. 

Yours most truly, 

C. Lamb. 
This is a letter of business, so I wont send un- 



150 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

seasonable Love to M'^- Montague & the both 
good Proctors. 

Some one connected with a periodical had applied 
to Lamb for his co-operation^ and, the question of 
payment having arisen for articles supplied and 
printed, the author expressed himself dissatisfied 
with the amount sent. The present is a reply to a 
letter, in which the Editor or Publisher had ap- 
parently explained the circumstances. 



TO AN EDITOR OR PUBLISHER. 

DEAR Sir, — I am quite ashamed, after your 
kind letter, of having expressed any disap- 
pointment about my remuneration. It is quite equi- 
valent to the value of anything I have yet sent you. 
I had Twenty Guineas a sheet from the London, 
and what I did for them was more worth that 
sum than anything, I am afraid, I can now pro- 
duce, would be worth the lesser sum. I used up 
all my best thoughts in that publication, and I do 
not like to go on writing worse & worse, & feeling 
that I do so. I want to try something else. How- 



NEW LAMB NOTES & VERSES 151 

ever^ if any subject turns up^ which I think will 
do your Magazine no discredit^ you shall have it 
at your price, or something between that and my 
old price. I prefer writing to seeing you just now, 
for after such a letter as I have received from you, 
in truth I am ashamed to see you. We will never 
mention the thing again. 

Your obliged friend & Serv^- 

C. Lamb. 
June IJf. 

There is a letter from Lamb to Gary, of April Srd, 
1826, inviting him to meet George Darley and 
Allan Cunningham at Enfield on the following 
Wednesday. But the present unprinted note (the 
only one known of its kind) refers to some gather- 
ing in town — possibly for the purpose of discus- 
sing the position of the Magazine, then very near 
its dissolution. 



D 



{About April, 1826.] 

TO ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 

EAR Sir, — Our friends of the Lond. M. 
meet at 20 Russell St., Cov. Gar., this 



152 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

evens at J before 7. I shall be disappointed if you 
are not among them. Yours, 

With perfect sympathy, 
Thursd. C. Lamb. 

In the Four Generations of a Literary Family, 1897, 
I have inserted two or three letters from Hazlitt 
to Clarke respecting the Life of Napoleon. Here 
we have a note, which does not touch business 
matters, evidently written from Winterslow. Buck- 
ingham was the founder of the AthencBum. 

TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE. 

[Winterslow, early part of 1828.] 

DEAR Clarke, — Convey (the wise it call) the 
enclosed hare and Wiltshire bacon to the 
most agreeable of biographers at Highgate; & 
the other thumper & the article to the Editor of 

editors, J. S Buckingham, Esq. 

[W. H.]* 

Tell Henry f if he has a sweet tooth that way to 
detain the hogs-flesh. 

* The initials cut out. 

t Henry Leigh Hunt, Clarke's partner. 



NEW LAMB NOTES & VERSES 163 
A rather interesting letter to Hazlitt's son refers 
inter alia to a Life of the Essayist as already on 
the stocks — doubtless that which accompanied 
the Literary Remains in 1836 after Lamb's death. 
But no verses by him on his old friend seem to 
have been actually composed. They would have 
possessed a charm of their own. 

TO WILLIAM HAZLITTj JR. 

[Postmarked Sept. IS, 1831.] 
^EAR W"!-, — We have a sick house,, Mrs. 
WestW^^ daughter in a fever, & Grandaugh- 
ter in the meazles, & it is better to see no com- 
pany just now, but in a week or two we shall be 
very glad to see you ; come at a hazard then, on a 
week day if you can, because Sundays are stuifd 
up with friends on both parts of this ill-mix' d 
family. Your second letter, dated 3<^ Sept% came 
not till Sundy & we staid at home in evens in ex- 
pectation of seeing you. I have turned & twisted 
what you ask'd me to do in my head, & am 
obliged to say I can not undertake it — but as a 
composition for declining it, will you accept some 
verses which I meditate to be addrest to you on 




154 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

your father, & prefixable to your Life ? Write me 

word that I may have 'em ready against I see 

you some 10 days hence, when I calculate the 

House will be uninfected. Send your mother's 

address. 

If you are likely to be again at Cheshunt before 

that time, on second thoughts, drop in here, & 

consult — 

Yours, 

C. L. 

Not a line is yet written — so say, if I shall do 

*em. 

[Endorsed] 

W. Hazlitt, Esq., 
15, W ardour Street, 
Soho. 

A copy of verses by Lamb, referring to the daugh- 
ters of Vincent Novello, is addressed : — 

For 

Saint Cecilia, 

at Sign^' Vincenzo Novello s 

Music Repository, 

No. 67, Frith Street, 

Soho. 



NEW LAMB NOTES & VERSES 166 

The Sisters. 
On Emmas honest hrow we read display d 
The constant virtues of the Nut Broivn Maid ; 
Mellijiuous sounds on Clara's tongue we hear. 
Notes that once lured a Seraph from his sphere ; 
Cecilia's eyes such ivimiing beauties crown 
As Tvithout song might draw her Angel down. 

C. Lamb. 

This effusion belongs to what may be termed 
the Novello epochs but is posterior to that of 
November 8th^ 1830^ which I elsewhere erro- 
neously describe as the last of the series,, as this 
bears the Edmonton post-mark, and was probably 
written in 1833. To the very last Lamb con- 
tinued to swell the stock of literary trifles, for 
which he was perpetually importuned by friends. 
The slender volume of Album Verses, 1830, had 
been already reinforced by as much matter again, 
dispersed up and down among friends and corres- 
pondents. The quality scarcely improved. 
These later pieces of correspondence and versifi- 
cation, trivial as many of them are, were com- 
posed during years of comparative ease and tran- 



166 LAMB AND HAZLITT 

quility, forming a potent contrast to those of 
hardship and trials through which the writer 
passed at Christ's Hospital (as it was managed a 
century ago), and to the sordid misery of the pa- 
ternal home. We can barely read with patience 
even now the descriptions embodied in the pub- 
lished Essays of the barbarous and cruel scho- 
lastic discipline to which a sensitive and weakly 
boy, such as Lamb was, was subjected by the 
schoolmaster of the old type ; and then, owing to 
domestic exigencies and his sister's dependence 
on him, he transferred himself from one scene of 
checkered existence to another. In estimating 
these minor effusions, of which so many have 
gradually come to light, while a large number 
has possibly perished, we need not envy the com- 
fortable resources, the leisure hour, the gaiety or 
even levity here and there betrayed ; they were, 
set against that school-day, office-desk. Little 
Queen Street retrospect, and that life-long sor- 
row and burden, as nothing. We can only wonder 
that even such a cheerful and recuperative tem- 
perament as Lamb's did not sooner yield to the 
ever-pressing load ! 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Alphington, 49 
America, xlv., 1, 9, 23 
Anti-Jacobin Magazine, 
xxxvii., xliv. 

Barton, Bernard, xxxviii.- 

xli. 

Lucy, XXV. 

Beauty and the Beast, 

XXX., xxxi., xxxii. 
Black, Algernon, xxxiii. 

John, 135 

Blackwoods, 134 
Blanchard, Laman, xxxviii. 
Boston, N. E., 12, 14, 23 
Brodie, Sir B., li. 
Bruton Family, ix.-x., xi. 
Buckingham, J. S., 152 
Buonaparte, Lucien, 137 
Burn, J. S., 146 
Burneys, The, xxvii.-viii. 
Byron, Lord, li., 124 

Chambers Family, xxxiii. 
"Champion," xxxvi., xlix. 
Christ's Hospital, xxxvii., 

146 
Clarke, C. C, 152 
Cobbett, W., xlvi.-vii. 
Coleridge, Rev. E., xlix. 
S. T., xv.-xviii. 



Cruikshank, G., xlvi. 
Cunningham, Allan, 151 

Darners, The, 1 et seqq. 
Darley, George, 151 
Dickens, Charles, 49 
Dodd, Mead, & Co., xxvi. 
Duncan, (Dr.), Ciceronian 
Academy, lii. 

Edwards, Dr., 57 
EUenborough, Lord, xlvii. 
Evans, W. 145-6. 

Fields, The, ix.-x. 
Fitzgerald, Mrs. Edward, 

XXV. 

Foote, Miss, 125 

Foss Family, xxvii.-viii. 

Gillray, xxxvii. 
Gladmans, The, ix.-x. 
Godwin, W., xxxv. 

"Mr. H.,"xviii.,xxx.,91 
Hackney College, 33 et 

seqq. 
HalloweU, 12-14 
Hazlitts, The, xix., xx., 

xxvi., xlii., et seqq. 
Hodgkin, Thomas, 135 



160 



INDEX 



Holcroft, Thomas, xlix. 
Hone, W., xlvi.-vii., 146-49 
Hume, Joseph, xxvi., 63 

et seqq. 
Hunt, Leigh, xxxvi., li.-Iiii. 

Ireland, 3 et seqq., 11 

"John Woodvil," xxx. 
Johnson, Joseph, 58 

Kelly, Fanny and Lydia, 

xxvi.-vii. 
Kemble, Charles, liv. 
Kenneys, The, xxxiv.-v. 
Keymer, James, xxxviii.- 

xli. 

Lamb, Charles, ix. et seqq. 

and passim 
Lamb's Correspondence, 

xxiv.-xxix. 
Lamb's Library, xxi.-xxiv. 
Lamb^ John, the elder, xi.- 

xiii. 
the younger, xiii.- 

XV., xxii. 
Lewis Family, 8 
Liberal, The, xxxvi. 
Lioii's Head, liv. 
Lloyds, The, xv.-xviii., 

xliv. 
Loftus Family, 6, 58-9 
London Magazine, 151 



Lunar Society or Lunatics, 
li. 

Maidstone, 6-8 
Manning, T., xix. 
Marter, W., 143-44 
Milton, J., xvii. 
Montagu, Basil, 149 

Mrs., 150 

Moore, T., 124 
Moxon, Edward, xxxv. 

Napoleon, xlv., xlviii. 
"New Times," 1. 
Noailles, Duchesse de, 57 
Norris Family, xxiv. 
Novellos, The, 154-55 

Orinoco Tobacco smoked 
by C. Lamb, xix. 

Paris, 55-57 
Parsons, Nancy, 116 
Patmore, iP. G., 113-115 et 

seqq. 
Payne, J. H., 142 
Philadelphia Theatre, xxx. 
Priestley, Joseph, li., 27 
"Prince Dorus," xxx.-ii. 
Procters, The, 114, 124, 

127, 150 

R. and R., xxxvi. 
Railtons, The, 20 



INDEX 



161 



Robinson, H. C, xiv., 

xxxiii. 
Roscoes, The, 119, 121, &c. 
"Round Table," 120, 123 
Russell, Rev. J. F., xxix., 

XXX. 

Salt, Samuel, xii.-xiii. 
Shronell, 1-4 
Siddons, Henry, xxxv. 
Smith, J. T., xii.-iii. 
Southey, xliv.-xlvi. 
Stephens, Miss, 125 
Sterne, L., xiii., 128 
Stoddarts, The, xlviii.-li., 

64, 76, 105-108 
Swift, J., 5 



Talfourd, Sir T. N., liii. 
Thackeray, W. M., H. 
Thelwall, John, xlix. 
Thomas, Rev. Samuel, 8 
Tingry, P. F., 58-60 
Titian, Hazlitt's Copies 

from, 56 
Tracys, The, 19 et seqq. 

Watt, James, li. 
Way, Mr. , of Chicago, xxvi. 
Websters, The, 65 
Wordsworth, W., xvii. 

Yates Family, of Liver- 
pool, 20, 25 
Yates, Raymond, vii. 
"Yellow Dwarf," xlvii. 



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